Applied Cryptographer @ Ockam

Ockam is how distributed applications have end-to-end encrypted, trustful communication.

In this role, you will be responsible for the cryptographic design and implementation of Ockam protocols to create end-to-end application layer trust in data. We believe that, in order to have a realistically manageable vulnerability surface, all modern applications need end-to-end guarantees of data integrity and authenticity. The only way to build secure and private applications is to remove unnecessary implicit trust in network boundaries, intermediaries and infrastructure.

The Ockam team is passionate about making powerful cryptographic protocols simple and safe for application developers. Our Rust libraries are 100% open source and in this role, you will lead the effort to ensure that Ockam library APIs for secure communication are easy to use correctly and hard to misuse. This is a great opportunity for someone who has built cryptographic libraries in other languages to start their journey with Rust. Our team has deep expertise in Rust and is excited to help you.

This is an applied cryptography role which will involve researching and applying robust, peer reviewed, cryptographic primitives to the design of our trust protocols. The role will involve implementing cryptographic primitives and protocols in Rust. You will also work with Rust FFI and wrapper libraries in other languages like Elixir.

The role will require solving challenging problems in areas like End-to-End Encrypted Secure Channels, Authenticated Key-Exchange, Anonymous Credentials, Key lifecycle, Authentication, Authorization etc. Interesting cryptographic building blocks that you would get to dive deep into and apply to real-world problems will include - Noise Framework, Bi-linear parings, Zero knowledge proofs, Secure Multi Party Computation etc.

Ockam is a small and extremely senior team. We just raised a Series A and will be growing the team from 11 to 30 over the next two years. This role involves architecture, interface design, writing code, responsibility for testing, and publishing documentation. Everyone on the Ockam team takes responsibility for their parts from end-to-end, including the creation of long term objectives, issues in GitHub, task management, and summaries of key results.

Expertise

Applied Cryptography & Cryptographic Protocols
Writing security sensitive code
Authentication & Authorization protocols
Secure Channels, Noise Protocol Framework, Strobe Protocol Framework, TLS and AKEs
Misuse-resistant Secure API design
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), x509 etc.
Elliptic Curve Cryptography
Individual and collaborative project management leadership

Experience

10+ years of engineering experience
Building complex code bases
Common networking and messaging protocols
Distributed systems
Git and GitHub’s workflow
Consuming and contributing to open source codebases
Multiple programming languages

Ockam is a distributed, remote-first team with a headquarters in San Francisco California.

How to join the Ockam Team

Engineering Levels at Ockam

Ockam is a High Performance Team