Senior Distributed Systems Engineer
Level inferred from job title
Job description
Design and build the scalable, privacy-preserving infrastructure that powers data access and compute in the Vana decentralized AI network. The role focuses on distributed systems that move encrypted data across nodes, verify permissions through cryptographic proofs, and support ML workflows.
At a glance
- Work mode
- Remote
What you'll do
- Lead the development of data query and compute layer with the goal of scaling it to process data required to train AI models applied to use-cases in EV, robotics, finances, healthcare and more
- Design critical protocol mechanisms related to data privacy, permissioning and provenance applying recent cryptography techniques like ZK proofs, MCP, TEEs
- Contribute to the development of Vana - EVM-compatible L1 blockchain specifically designed for user-owned data transactions
- Develop comprehensive documentation and contribute to whitepapers, including collaborations with outside researchers and engineers from MIT and top AI labs/startups
- Develop and implement robust debugging and troubleshooting processes for quick resolution of node-related issues in production environments
- Participate in code reviews and provide technical guidance to team members
What we're looking for
- Experience in building large scale, secure, multi-node distributed systems
- Experience designing pipelines for processing large amounts of data, ideally leveraging distributed data storage
- Experience in Python, Go or similar languages in mission-critical systems
- Experience profiling, debugging, and optimizing distributed systems for scale and performance
- Some infrastructure experience with any of the top cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure)
- Experience in a fast-paced, async-first, globally distributed startup environment with rapid prototyping and iterative development
Nice to have
- Experience in the compute-over-data space including sandboxed execution, data locality etc
- Experience with ML workflows (cleaning data, training and fine-tuning models)
- Experience with privacy preserving computation (TEEs, MPC, ZKP)
- Experience or interest in decentralization technologies and web3 (protocol design, smart contracts development)
- Track-record of significantly contributing to OSS
Benefits
- A competitive salary with equity options
- A comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and vision insurance
- A flexible work schedule
- Unlimited PTO
Apply
About Vana
The leading decentralized AI network powered by user-owned data
Vana is the leading decentralized AI network powered by user-owned data. Its guiding use case is a user-owned AI foundation model, collectively owned by 100 million users who've all contributed their data to it. Projects like the Reddit data DAO that onboarded 140k users are built on Vana.
Mission
Building an open ecosystem to break down the walled gardens of tech giants, accelerating AI progress and giving users ownership in the AI models they create.
Key facts
- Started out of MIT
- Raised $20M from leading VCs including Paradigm and Polychain
- Reddit data DAO onboarded 140k users
- Building an EVM-compatible L1 blockchain specifically designed for user-owned data transactions
Partners & customers
What they value
- Collaboration
- Supporting each other to learn, grow, and excel
- Diverse, driven, smart, and ambitious team
- Constantly challenging each other to grow, learn and iterate faster