Senior Software Engineer, Developer Platform

About the role

You will architect and own the core developer experience for the Arbitrum ecosystem, defining how thousands of engineers interact with our platforms. You will design and build the foundational tools that abstract the complexity of blockchain while preserving its core strengths of decentralization and security. This role requires you to think in systems, ensuring the reliability and performance of critical infrastructure that underpins major dApps and enterprises. You will collaborate closely with protocol engineers to ensure our developer tools accurately reflect and support the latest advancements in Layer 2 technology. You will be responsible for creating intuitive abstractions that allow developers to build without needing to understand the intricacies of low-level blockchain mechanics. Your work will directly influence the direction of the entire Arbitrum ecosystem and the applications built upon it. You will own the full lifecycle of complex features, from initial design and scoping through implementation, testing, and long-term maintenance. If you are driven by building robust systems that empower others, this is your opportunity to leave a significant mark on a foundational layer of the internet.

Key facts

What you'll do

Investigate and diagnose intricate performance regressions within the Arbitrum Nitro node software to ensure optimal execution for all ecosystem participants.

Design and implement new abstractions in our developer tooling that simplify the interaction with Arbitrum-specific features for frontend developers.

Refactor legacy components of our core infrastructure to improve maintainability and reduce the cognitive load for future engineering hires.

Collaborate with product teams to translate high-level roadmap initiatives into detailed technical specifications for new developer platform features.

Implement robust testing frameworks and integration pipelines that validate the correctness of our core protocols before they reach production environments.

Analyze real-world usage metrics from our ecosystem to identify friction points and drive iterative improvements in the developer experience.

Lead the design of new APIs that enable seamless integration between Arbitrum chains and traditional web2 services for our partners.

Evaluate and integrate new JavaScript libraries and toolchains to ensure our stack remains modern and competitive within the broader web3 landscape.

Mentor junior engineers by providing code reviews, technical guidance, and clear documentation for complex systems.

Partner with security researchers to proactively identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities in our developer-facing infrastructure.

Champion the adoption of best practices in software engineering across the platform team to ensure consistency and reliability.

Explore novel approaches to data availability and transaction propagation that could enhance the capabilities of future Arbitrum rollups.

Synthesize complex technical concepts into clear documentation and internal wikis to facilitate knowledge sharing across the organization.

Take ownership of critical production incidents, leading the post-mortem process to implement preventative measures for the future.

Requirements

You must have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

You must possess a deep understanding of distributed systems and be able to articulate the tradeoffs between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance.

You must have extensive experience with at least one statically typed, compiled language such as Go, Rust, or Java.

You must have a proven track record of building and maintaining large-scale distributed systems that handle high throughput and low latency.

You must be highly proficient in writing clean, efficient, and well-tested JavaScript or TypeScript code.

You must have a strong grasp of Ethereum concepts, including the EVM, transaction lifecycle, and consensus mechanisms.

You must have experience working with protocol-level code and performance-critical infrastructure.

You must be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment where priorities can shift based on technical discoveries and ecosystem demands.

Nice to have

Experience contributing to open-source projects at a significant scale.

Familiarity with the Ethereum stack, including execution clients like Geth and consensus clients like Prysm.

Hands-on experience with Layer 2 scaling solutions and the specific challenges they address.

Knowledge of zero-knowledge proof systems or optimistic verification mechanisms.

Experience with cloud infrastructure providers and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.

Practical notes

This is a full-time remote position.

Please indicate your location and eligibility to work in the job application.

We are an equal opportunity employer.