Head of Protocol

Protofire is looking for a Head of Protocol Operations to lead the deployment, operation, and continuous optimization of a lending market built as a fork of Aave v3. This person will own the full operational lifecycle from deployment and monitoring to risk management, treasury operations, and community coordination, ensuring the protocol’s stability, compliance, and growth.

You will lead a multidisciplinary team of smart contract engineers, full-stack developers, and risk analysts, serving as the bridge between technical development, security, and business operations.

Key Responsibilities:

• Oversee daily operations of the Aave v3-based lending protocol, including market configuration, liquidity pool setup, asset onboarding/offboarding, and interest rate strategies.
• Ensure smooth functioning of smart contracts, oracles, and risk parameters.
• Coordinate protocol upgrades, versioning, and governance proposals.
• Implement and maintain risk management frameworks for collateral, liquidity, and market parameters.
• Work with auditors and white-hat partners to ensure a robust security posture.
• Monitor protocol health (liquidations, utilization, reserves, oracle accuracy) and respond to incidents.
• Manage and mentor a small cross-functional team (developers, risk analysts, operations specialists).
• Align team goals with protocol roadmap and milestones.
• Interface with external contributors, partners, and community members.
• Define operational playbooks for new deployments (testnet → mainnet → multi-chain).
• Establish monitoring dashboards, alerting, and incident response processes.
• Collaborate with BD and marketing to launch new assets or features responsibly.
• Participate in governance discussions and parameter proposals.

Required Skills & Experience

• 5+ years of experience in DeFi, crypto protocols, or financial risk operations.
• Deep understanding of Aave v2/v3 architecture.
• Also, it is valuable to have knowledge on similar protocols (Compound, Morpho, Venus, etc.).
• Strong grasp of DeFi lending mechanics, including collateral ratios, liquidation engines, interest rate models, and oracle dependencies.
• Experience in protocol operations or smart contract lifecycle management.
• Familiarity with security audits, bug bounty processes, and operational risk frameworks.
• Solid understanding of DeFi tooling (Tenderly, DeBank, Dune, DefiLlama, Blocksec, etc.) and analytics.
• Proven leadership experience, managing technical teams or protocol operations.
• Excellent communication skills.

Nice-to-Haves:

• Experience working on or around Aave, Gauntlet, or risk teams within other DeFi protocols.
• Experience contributing to open-source DeFi protocols.
• Familiarity with Stellar, EVM-compatible environments, or cross-chain infrastructure.
• Understanding of DeFi compliance frameworks (KYT, AML, institutional risk).
• Data analytics or simulation modeling background (e.g., Gauntlet-style risk modeling).