Protocol Security Engineer, Matter Labs
Ethereum R&D and scaling solutions
Be an early applicant
Ethereum R&D and scaling solutions
101-200 employees
Be an early applicant
101-200 employees
Company mission
To accelerate the mass adoption of crypto for financial sovereignty.
Role
Who you are
- This role is ideal for someone who is curious, thrives on breaking systems, and wants to apply that mindset ethically in a high-stakes environment
- Curiosity & hacker mindset — you want to know how things break, not just how they work
- Strong security instincts with the ability to anticipate adversarial behaviors
- Familiarity with recent security incidents in the blockchain space and knowledge of prevention techniques
- Practical experience with Solidity smart contracts, ZK circuits, or core blockchain protocols (preferred but not required)
- Comfort with protocol-level debugging and root-cause analysis
- Proficiency in strongly typed languages (e.g., C++, Scala, Go); Rust and Solidity are our primary languages, but prior experience with them is not mandatory
- Deep understanding of algorithms, data structures, and their computational/memory complexities
- Experience implementing data structures and algorithms from scratch
- Fluent written and spoken English
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Protocol Security Engineer to join our Security Team
- This role blends hands-on security work with the opportunity to influence protocol security from the earliest stages of development
- You’ll focus on safeguarding ZKsync’s core components—smart contracts, ZK circuits, and blockchain nodes—while staying at the forefront of security research and industry best practices
- Intentionally breaking things — conducting threat modeling and internal reviews of Solidity contracts, blockchain state transition functions (Rust), and other critical systems
- Tracking the latest hacks, exploits, and attack vectors across the industry, and translating lessons learned into actionable security improvements
- Embedding security best practices across development teams and influencing secure design
- Taking ownership of protocol components with a focus on secure architecture and implementation
- Participating in security investigations and incident response, often under time-sensitive and high-pressure conditions
Our take
While the Ethereum network offers users highly rated security, the trade off is that its network volume doesn’t have enough capacity to allow for fast and cheap transactions. Matter Labs is one of a small number of companies that are building scaling protocols through its zero-knowledge proof driven product, zkSync.
It’s not the only company of its kind, with the likes of Arbitrum and Optimism also receiving plenty of publicity and funding. However, Matter Labs zero-knowledge proof approach has been praised for both its transaction speed and security. If it was easy however, many more companies would be doing it, so it appears that Matter Labs has made a significant headstart on the competition.
Over the last couple of years, the startup has secured some major funding from high-profile investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Union Square Ventures. Matter Labs released its recently renamed ZkSync Era - a zero-knowledge, open-source security platform on Ethereum in 2023. Matter Labs is predicting zero-knowledge cryptography to outlive alternative "optimistic" security tech from the likes of Arbitrum.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
94% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Nov 2022
$200m
SERIES C
Nov 2021
$50m
SERIES B
Total funding: $258m
Company benefits
- Remote working
- Equity options
- Annual pay raise
- 28 work days of paid vacation
- 10 days of paid sick leave / year
Company HQ
George Town, George Town
Leadership
Alex Gluchowski
(CEO)Has co-founded two previous startups, wellbeing platform Somuchmore (acquired by Urbansportsclub), and camper-rental startup PaulCamper.
Alexandr Vlasov
(R&D Head)Electrical Engineering PhD. Former Chief Research Scientist at BANKEX Foundation.
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