Senior Software Engineer, C++/Rust

Interested in working on cutting-edge blockchain technology and creating equitable access to the global financial system? Since 2014, the mission-driven team at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has helped fuel the tremendous growth of the Stellar blockchain network, an open-source platform that operates at high-scale today. Developers and companies around the world build on it, and the SDF team is expanding to support the rapidly growing and changing Stellar ecosystem.

As a C++ Engineer at Stellar, you'll be at the heart of it all—designing and evolving Stellar Core, the distributed engine powering our global ledger and consensus. This is your chance to work on real-world, high-impact distributed systems that are actively used by developers, institutions, and builders around the world.

You’ll tackle complex, meaningful challenges that push the boundaries of what’s possible in blockchain—boosting performance, strengthening decentralization, and designing incentive mechanisms that drive long-term network health. Whether you're optimizing peer-to-peer networking, building resilience against coordinated attacks, or simulating consensus models to validate security and scalability—you’ll be doing it all.

If you're excited by formal verification, simulations, distributed systems, and multi-core performance, and want to help shape the foundation of an open financial future, we’d love to meet you.

In this role, you will:

• Design and build key components of Stellar Core - the backbone software behind the Stellar Network.

• Design and develop robust, scalable, and extensible technologies that empower our developers and network participants.

• Collaborate on new architectures and subsystems, working alongside our CTO, our team of engineers, and our community of open source developers.

• Write clean, maintainable code with an emphasis on edge case analysis and future-proofing our work.

• Own core subsystems of Stellar Core, and help the team hit critical product milestones.

• Collaborate with the team on code review and design, and contribute to best practices for all of engineering at SDF.

• Investigate and refactor performance bottlenecks in order to continue scaling the system.

• Author detailed technical feature and protocol (RFC) specifications - we take design seriously, and we encourage everyone to be a part of our RFC processes.

You have: 

• You have 4+ years of experience developing software on a team.

• You have a BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent field.

• You excel in writing code in modern C++ or Rust in a production environment.

• You're a great communicator that can advocate and lead technical discussions, especially during the design and code review process.

• You have a solid understanding of software design patterns, and how to build components that are reusable, extensible, and modular.

• You are knowledgeable of best practices and development tools and are passionate about technological innovation.

• You have a passion for performance debugging and benchmarking.

• You love a good challenge in an ever-evolving space - many of the challenges we face are being faced for the first time!

• You're enthusiastic about working on a small, growing team where you'll be given a lot of autonomy.

• You're open, empathetic, and care about putting the best ideas forward in a collaborative and helpful manner.

Bonus Points if:

• You have direct experience with designing and implementing distributed systems.

• You have a strong curiosity in blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, and understand the fundamentals of these systems.

We offer competitive pay with a base salary range for this position of $180,000 - $280,000 depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, we offer lumen-denominated grants along with the following perks and benefits:

USA Benefits/Perks:

• Competitive health, dental & vision coverage with most plans covered at 100% for the employee + any dependents

• Flexible time off + 15 company holidays including a company-wide holiday break

• 401(k) with 4% match

• Commuter benefits with $250/month employer contribution

• Health & Dependent Care FSA Accounts

• Health Savings Account (HSA) with monthly employer contribution

• Gym reimbursement ($80 per month)

• Life & ADD (1x salary, up to $250K)

• Short & Long term disability

• Generous paid parental leave for all parents, plus paid pregnancy disability leave for birthing parents

• Family building benefits through Kindbody

• Wellbeing benefits (One Medical, Rightway, Headspace)

• L&D budget of $1,500/year

• Daily lunch and snacks in office

• Company retreats

#LI-Hybrid

About Stellar

Stellar is more than a blockchain. Powered by a decentralized, fast, scalable, and uniquely sustainable network made for financial products and services and a thriving and passionate ecosystem that includes a non-profit organization driven by a mission, Stellar is paving the path to unlock the world’s economic potential through blockchain technology. Built with speed and low costs in mind, the Stellar network provides builders and financial institutions worldwide a platform to issue assets, and to send and convert currencies in real time creating real world utility. Founded in 2014, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) supports the continued development and growth of the Stellar network and also serves the ecosystem of NGOs, corporations, universities, small businesses, governments, and solo entrepreneurs building on the Stellar network through tooling, funding and strategic collaborations. Together, Stellar is where blockchain meets the real world.

About the Stellar Development Foundation

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting change-makers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. SDF provides grants, investments, funding, and other awards to builders and organizations. SDF also develops resources and tooling on the Stellar network to help unlock real world utility. As a nonprofit foundation, SDF puts the health of the Stellar network and the Stellar ecosystem and its mission above all else.

We look forward to hearing from you!

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SDF is committed to diversity in its workforce and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. SDF does not make hiring or employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other basis protected by applicable local, state or federal law.