DeFi Protocol Engineer

Posted 2 Days Ago
Be an Early Applicant
40 Locations
In-Office or Remote
Mid level
Blockchain
The Role
Build, maintain, test, and optimize Injective’s Cosmos-SDK blockchain and DeFi protocol components, including orderbooks, trade execution, matching engines, financial primitives, and Layer-2 infrastructure. Design and deploy features end to end, write Golang clients, improve scalability and performance, and collaborate with internal teams and open-source communities. The role requires blockchain engineering, financial systems, distributed systems, and production Golang experience.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Injective Labs

Injective Labs is trailblazing a new dawn for Web3 enabled finance. We are the core contributors to Injective, one of the fastest growing blockchains in the industry.

Injective provides an interoperable smart contracts platform that is optimized for building decentralized finance applications. Interoperability is at the core of Injective, which is natively integrated with chains such as Ethereum, Cosmos and Solana. Developers can rapidly launch premier financial applications suited for mass adoption using Injective’s infrastructure and specialized DeFi primitives such as the world’s first fully on-chain order book.

Our team has decades of experience spearheading the largest financial institutions and tech organizations. Injective is incubated by Binance and is backed by leading firms such as Jump Crypto, Pantera and Mark Cuban.

About the role

We are looking for an accomplished DeFi Protocol Engineer with a strong background in financial systems who can fit into an existing highly skilled global dev team. Your role is to work closely with the protocol team to brainstorm, write specs, implement, and test chain features for our Injective DeFi modules, bringing real-world trading and exchange expertise to how they are designed. You also have the freedom to detect and take ownership to improve chain performance and scalability via kvstore optimization, processing logic, and the order matching engine.

If you're an autonomous engineer with strong financial experience who enjoys working with a high degree of ownership, and you're looking to make a real impact on one of the fastest-growing blockchains, this role is for you.

Responsibilities:
  • Build, maintain, and test core components on our Cosmos-SDK protocol, including our decentralized orderbook, trade execution coordinator, order matcher, and Layer-2 execution environment

  • Design and implement financial primitives on-chain (derivatives, margining, liquidations, pricing and risk logic), translating proven TradFi practices into robust protocol features

  • Develop and optimize core components of the Injective blockchain (consensus, state management, financial infrastructure and applications)

  • Take end-to-end ownership of features, from requirement gathering and specs through architecture, implementation, testing and deployment

  • Write open-source Golang clients that allow users to interact directly with our protocol and smart contracts

  • Contribute to the research and development of new blockchain features and technologies

  • Work closely with cross-functional teams, including front-end developers, back-end developers, and quality assurance engineers, to deliver comprehensive blockchain solutions

  • Collaborate with external partners and open-source communities to enhance our blockchain ecosystem

Who you are:
  • Minimum of 3 years’ experience as a Blockchain Engineer

  • Strong prior experience in finance, ideally building trading systems, exchanges, or algo trading/derivatives platforms at a bank, trading firm, or exchange

  • Track record of building large, complex, and performant distributed systems in production

  • Worked on at least two production Golang codebases that are reasonably large and performant

  • Strong knowledge of Go idioms, libraries, and parallel processing

  • Strong knowledge of blockchain, DeFi & DEX concepts, consensus mechanisms, CosmWasm contract platform

  • Strong knowledge of CS fundamentals such as data structures and API design

  • Self-driven and comfortable owning problems end-to-end with minimal oversight

  • Ability to communicate technical concepts with other technical and non-technical team members

Nice to haves:
  • Experience with Cosmos-SDK/Tendermint

  • Deep knowledge of financial instruments and markets (derivatives, credit, perpetuals, options)

  • Experience with low-latency or high-throughput trading infrastructure

  • Experience with cryptography libraries, including digital signatures and hash algorithms used by Ethereum and Cosmos

  • Experience with key-value databases, especially ones used by cosmos-sdk

  • Experience with Ethereum/Solidity

Why work with us?
  • Competitive salary and INJ token award

  • Remote-friendly work environment with flexible hours

  • Unlimited PTO

  • Equipment

  • Home Office Stipend

  • Opportunity to work on cutting-edge blockchain technology in the finance industry

  • Collaborative team culture with opportunities for professional growth and development

  • Global team meetups

As an equal opportunity employer we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind. Whether that’s based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state or local laws.

We will only contact candidates using emails from the @injectivelabs.org domain. If you are approached by any other account or domain regarding this position, it was not sent by us. Please stay cautious and report any suspicious communication.

 
 

Skills Required

  • Minimum 3 years of experience as a Blockchain Engineer
  • Strong prior experience in finance, including trading systems, exchanges, or algorithmic trading and derivatives platforms
  • Experience building large, complex, performant distributed systems in production
  • Experience with at least two large and performant production Golang codebases
  • Strong knowledge of Go idioms, libraries, and parallel processing
  • Strong knowledge of blockchain, DeFi, DEX concepts, consensus mechanisms, and CosmWasm
  • Strong knowledge of computer science fundamentals, including data structures and API design
  • Ability to work autonomously and own problems end to end with minimal oversight
  • Ability to communicate technical concepts to technical and non-technical team members
  • Experience with Cosmos SDK and Tendermint
  • Deep knowledge of financial instruments and markets, including derivatives, credit, perpetuals, and options
  • Experience with low-latency or high-throughput trading infrastructure
  • Experience with cryptography libraries, digital signatures, and Ethereum and Cosmos hash algorithms
  • Experience with key-value databases used by Cosmos SDK
  • Experience with Ethereum and Solidity

Injective Labs Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Injective Labs and has not been reviewed or approved by Injective Labs.

  • Equity Value & Accessibility — Roles highlight a Token Equity Package and INJ token awards on top of salary, indicating accessible upside within the total comp mix. Job postings and the careers page consistently position token awards as a core element of compensation.
  • Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible or unlimited PTO is repeatedly promoted across role descriptions and company materials. Feedback suggests employees view the policy as a meaningful part of the package.
  • Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Remote‑first norms, work‑from‑anywhere flexibility, and flexible hours are emphasized, with equipment provision and home‑office stipends supporting distributed work. Mentions of global team meetups further underscore lifestyle-oriented benefits.

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The Company
HQ: New York, NY
43 Employees
Year Founded: 2018

What We Do

Injective Labs is a core contributor to Injective, the blockchain built for finance. Injective is an open, interoperable network that uniquely provides solutions for DeFi developers. Cosmos IBC and Ethereum compatible, Injective is a hub for dApps shaping the future of finance. Applications built on top of Injective enjoy zero gas fees, secure transactions, and fast transmissions for dynamic scalability. To build with Injective: https://injective.com/developers. To join the Injective Labs team: https://jobs.lever.co/injectivelabs.

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