Cryptography Engineer

About Heliax

Heliax is a remote-first public goods lab which researches, develops, deploys, and maintains open-source protocols & mechanisms designed to serve the everyday needs of humanity. Using this, we build vertically integrated open-source products and networks that form coherent open systems which are capable of acting as an alternative to existing exploitative paradigms.

Heliax’s work includes the Anoma protocol and Namada.

Anoma is the universal intent machine, introducing intent-centric architecture for a new paradigm of human-centric applications. Anoma provides a universal multichain interface for building fully decentralized intent-centric apps that can satisfy user needs and preferences across any network. Enabling decentralized counterparty discovery, solving, and multichain atomic settlement, Anoma removes the need for complicated UX, addresses coordination problems, and paves the way for a user controlled internet.

Namada is the shielded asset hub rewarding users to protect the multichain. Enabling full control over the sharing of personal data in on-chain activities, Namada uses advanced ZK cryptography to deliver unparalleled data protection to existing assets, applications, and blockchain networks. Namada introduces shielded cross-chain interactions and passive rewards for holding assets in and strengthening its shielded set.

Overview

• Produce technical specifications for designs & instantiations of cryptographic protocols and assist with implementation in coordination with team members.
• Evaluate and analyze existing zkSNARK and zkSTARK proof systems for security, expressivity, and performance; monitor the state of the research field for compelling new theoretical advances.
• Evaluate and analyze existing zkvms such as Cairo, Rics0, Nexus, SP1 and Jolt for expressivity, and performance.
• Update & alter existing cryptographic protocols and arithmetic circuits, customize them for specific proof-of-concept and production use-cases.
• Implement, review, and test cryptographic operations & protocols, primarily in Rust, evaluate existing implementations.

Qualifications

• Prior experience with cryptographic protocols, especially zkSNARKS or zkSTARKs
• Prior experience in low-level systems programming, ideally in Rust
• Self-motivated & self-organized

Bonus Qualifications

• Academic research background in mathematics, computer science, economics, and/or game theory
• Prior experience with distributed ledger (blockchain) technology
• Experience in a functional programming language such as Elixir or Haskell

Example projects

• Taiga: A resource machine implementation using Halo2
• AARM-Cairo: A resource machine implementation using Cairo
• Anoma Art

Misc

Remote or local (Zürich/Zug, Berlin). Remote or local (Zürich/Zug, Berlin). When remote, preferred if mostly located within Asia.

Ideally someone who enjoys travel, nature and hiking. Often we find that protocols are best designed not in a meeting room but rather on a trail 🏔️.