Come join Irreducible as we accelerate the ZK revolution by supporting web3 networks with reliable and cost-efficient proof generation. We’re a high-performance cryptography startup (with an exciting hardware twist) looking to expand our cryptography team. A more technical description of what we do below! If you’re a Cryptographer passionate about the Zero Knowledge space, read on!
What will you do:
Help in developing binary proof systems by designing secure protocols, implementing strong cryptographic algorithms, conducting a thorough analysis, integrating security measures, and fostering innovation.
Stay updated on the latest advancements in cryptography, and review research in the space to see how it can be adapted to our proof system, Binius.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams and implement cryptographic solutions in our software/hardware environment.
Work with the team to publish papers, ensuring our research gets viewed by the wider field.
About you:
You are a researcher fascinated by cryptography and excited to “solve the unsolvable.” You are a direct, respectful, and clear communicator who gets laser-focused on a topic and can discuss it for hours. You’re motivated to go the extra mile and engage in solving the problem.
Apply if you have:
Published at least 2 papers in the field of zero-knowledge cryptography (this is a must)
3+ years of Cryptography experience
Strong experience using Python and Sage
Familiarity with the FRI protocol
Bonus qualifications:
Blended hardware/software company background
Familiarity with Rust
Early-stage startup experience
You’re able to relocate to New York City and work with the team full-time in our NYC office
About us (deep dive):
We’re building out a high-performance, cost-efficient compute stack for advanced cryptographic proofs, specifically zk-SNARKs. Verifiable computing with zk-SNARKs is taking off as a solution to the scalability and privacy limitations that today’s blockchains suffer from. A new wave of blockchain protocols that use zk-SNARKs to prove smart contract executions, such as Polygon zkEVM, Starknet, and zkSync, are already in production. We believe there is a big market opportunity to generate proofs for these networks at scale in a cost-effective way [1]. There are lots of interesting performance engineering challenges we need to solve to keep up with the maximum device throughput.
We take the approach of co-designing hardware and software systems to accelerate SNARK generation end-to-end. Our first-generation tech stack uses FPGA accelerators running custom digital logic tailor-made for our use case [2]. We also conduct cryptography research to identify computationally efficient algorithms for verifiable computing. These research efforts produced a novel cryptographic construction based on towers of binary fields called Binius [3], which we are currently developing into a production-grade system. Our team has cross-domain expertise and includes hardware designers, low-level systems software engineers, cryptography engineers, and data center specialists, several of whom worked in HFT previously.
[1] https://www.paradigm.xyz/2022/04/zk-hardware
[2] https://www.ulvetanna.io/news/fpga-architecture-for-goldilocks-ntt
[3] https://www.ulvetanna.io/news/binius-hardware-optimized-snark
[4] https://www.ulvetanna.io/news/introducing-ulvetanna
Locations supported:
We’re looking for candidates who are located between the USA East Coast and Central Europe time zones. Although we’re a globally distributed company, ensuring the leadership team works in cohesive time zones is essential to our goals. Additionally, the company plans to get together ~one week per quarter at our New York City office.
NOTE: We can not sponsor visas of any kind at this time.
We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where talented individuals can thrive and grow. We value the different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds that each person brings to our team. Even if you don’t fit 100% of the job’s necessary qualifications, we’d still love to hear from you.
