ZK Research Engineer

What We're Building

At Succinct, our mission is to empower developers to use zero-knowledge proofs to create the next-generation of blockchain applications. We work with some of the best teams in the space to develop powerful applications enabled by ZK including DA protocols, alt L1s, liquid staking protocols and more. We have a track record of shipping excellent products and cutting-edge technical work in ZK and have traction and revenue. 

Our team is small but incredibly strong, with ample funding from the best investors in crypto. We’re looking for exceptional people who are excited to work hard on challenging and impactful problems in a fast-paced environment. Our office is located in San Francisco and we have a strong preference for candidates based there for this role.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced cryptography research engineer to join our team and help shape the Succinct ZK roadmap. Succinct’s goal is to build a platform that can productize the best ZK proof systems and make them available to blockchain developers. This involves understanding the current ZK landscape as well as doing fundamental research and advancing towards the future of ZK to ensure that our platform remains state of the art.

Your day to day will involve research and keeping up to date with the latest advances in proof systems and frameworks, and analyzing their tradeoffs and performance characteristics. You will also spend some of your time coding and prototyping ideas alongside the rest of the ZK team. We are looking for someone with a deep understanding of cryptography as well as sufficient coding ability.

Our team has a track record of shipping cutting-edge primitives that are widely useful to the ecosystem, such as state of the art parallelized STARK signature verification, a groth16 FRI verifier, and more. Examples of our work can be found here and there is a lot more research-oriented work in the pipeline:

• https://github.com/succinctlabs/gnark-plonky2-verifier

• https://github.com/succinctlabs/curta

• https://github.com/succinctlabs/succinctx/tree/main/plonky2x

Qualifications

• Prior experience developing zkSNARK circuits and/or ZK proving systems

• Very strong mathematical and cryptography background and deep knowledge of different ZK stacks and ZK VMs

• At least basic familiarity with Rust and/or another programming language used in implementation of new ZK proving systems

• Ownership mindset 

• Strong communication and collaboration skills

Nice to have

• Strong math and/or cryptography background

• Strong knowledge of algorithms or optimizations

• Familiarity with optimized systems programming, VMs

• Familiarity with Rust

Location

Everyone on our team is located in San Francisco and works together in-person. Ideally, we’re looking for someone who enjoys in-person work and is already in San Francisco or willing to relocate (we can cover relocation costs). For senior candidates who are an exceptional fit, we’d consider a remote position as long as you’re available to onboard in-person for the first few months (so that we can get you up to speed with our codebase and culture).

Even if the listed qualifications don't seem like an exact match, passionate and enthusiastic people who love to quickly learn are always welcome! Feel free to reach out or apply regardless and we would love to chat.