Stellar Development Foundation

Senior Software Engineer, C++

Stellar Development Foundation$180K — $280K *
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 4+ years of software development experience in a team setting
  • BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent
  • Proficient in modern C++ or Rust in a production environment
  • Strong communication skills for technical discussions
  • Solid understanding of software design patterns
  • Knowledgeable about development best practices and tools
  • Passionate about performance debugging and benchmarking

Responsibilities

  • Design and build pivotal components of Stellar Core
  • Create scalable and extensible technologies for developers
  • Collaborate on new architectures with the CTO and engineering team
  • Write clean, maintainable code focusing on edge cases
  • Own core subsystems and meet critical product milestones
  • Participate in code reviews and contribute to best practices
  • Refactor performance bottlenecks to enhance system scalability
  • Draft technical feature and protocol specifications (RFC)

Benefits

  • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage at 100% for employees and dependents
  • Flexible time off + 15 company holidays including a company-wide break
  • Up to 12 weeks paid parental leave for all parents
  • Gym reimbursement of $80/month
  • Life and AD&D insurance coverage up to $50K
  • Short and long-term disability insurance
  • 401K plan with 4% employer match
  • Health and Dependent Care FSA Accounts
  • Monthly commuter benefits with $250 contribution
  • Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contributions
  • Family building benefits through Kindbody
  • Wellbeing benefits including One Medical and Headspace
  • Learning & Development budget of $1,500/year
  • Provided daily lunch and snacks in the office
  • Company retreats
Full Job Description
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
  • Generous paid parental leave for all parents, plus paid pregnancy disability leave for birthing parents
  • Gym reimbursement ($80 per month)
  • Life & ADD (up to $50K)
  • Short & Long term disability
  • 401K with 4% match
  • Health & Dependent Care FSA Accounts
  • Commuter benefits with $250/month employer contribution
  • Health Savings Account (HSA) with monthly employer contribution
  • 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 Development Foundation

Stellar Development Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of the Stellar blockchain network. Stellar is an open-source, decentralized payment protocol that enables fast, low-cost, cross-border transactions. The foundation was established in 2014 by Jed McCaleb, the co-founder of Ripple, and Joyce Kim, a lawyer and entrepreneur. The foundation's mission is to promote financial access and inclusion by making it easier and cheaper to move money around the world. Stellar's network has been used by companies such as IBM and Deloitte to facilitate cross-border payments and remittances.
Learn more about Stellar Development Foundation
Size
100 employees
Industry
Founded
2014

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