Rust Developer - Cycles Team
Full Time
Canada, UK, USA, Remote
About the Cycles team
The Cycles team (previously known as CoFi, see thread) at Informal Systems is part of an early stage startup effort within the company to build an open clearing protocol, a platform to clear the most debt for the most people with the least money. In contrast to existing payment systems focused solely on the transfer of assets, Cycles is focused instead on the clearing of debts by operating over the network of liabilities which underly all payments. By taking this network view, Cycles unlocks profound new opportunities for regular businesses to access preferred sources of liquidity, and to reduce risk both individually and systemically.
Cycles enables businesses to easily and privately upload their obligations, connect their sources of liquidity, settle up, and save. Turns out there are significant inefficiencies in the payments graph that create cash flow stress and higher working capital costs for businesses. These inefficiencies derive from lack of a coherent view of the obligation network, and can be resolved through atomic multi-lateral fault-tolerant execution of solutions to a flow optimization problem defined over the network of payment obligations and available sources of liquidity. Using the network of obligations as a foundation, Cycles provides a platform for new kinds of currencies, lending protocols, and issuance protocols to be integrated in a risk-reduced environment for the benefit of real-world commerce.
We're hiring a Senior Rust developer to join our early stage team in building the algorithms and protocols that will bring this unique payment system design to life, and directly improve the sustainability of SMEs around the world.
About the Role
As a Rust Developer on the Cycles team, you will play a crucial role in shaping the core algorithm and protocols of our platform. You'll design and implement graph flow solver algorithms, privacy preserving protocols (TEEs and ZKPs), settlement protocols, and credit systems, and integrate them with on-chain environments like Cosmos and Ethereum. The Cycles team at Informal Systems has deep expertise in blockchain protocols, graph theory, payment protocols, and software engineering.
What sets us apart
Informal Systems has a strong, collaborative, remote-first culture that prioritizes autonomy, mastery, ownership, and purpose. Beyond the Cycles team, we have deep theoretical and practical distributed systems and formal methods experience. Our other business units perform security audits, run network infrastructure, and lead development of interchain protocols.
What your primary responsibilities will be:
- Be a driven, effective, and collaborative member of the team
- Design, implement, test, maintain, and evolve production blockchain protocols, including:
- Core graph algorithm in Rust: performance, scalability, cost functions, non-determinism, distributional effects, proof generation, etc.
- Privacy preserving protocols: Secure protocols for trust minimized execution of solvers in TEEs, on-chain remote attestation and zk proof verification of graph solutions, integration with Multi-Asset-Shielded Pools, etc.
- Credit protocols: Integrations with external DeFi credit protocols, secure graph queries, native credit protocols, mutual credit, p2p loans, reputational collateral, etc.
- Expand expertise and track ongoing developments in finance, accounting, and payments in order to deliver the most performant and reliable open clearing club for the world
What we look for in a successful Rust developer:
- 5+ years production software engineering experience
- 2+ years experience with Rust development
- Strong background in graph theory and network flow algorithms
- Familiarity with blockchain protocols, TEEs, ZK proofs and their software ecosystems
- Ability to work effectively in a diverse, remote-first, and international team environment
- Proven ability to contribute innovative ideas and solutions.
Some of our benefits include:
- A unique, caring and friendly culture (learn more about how we work here)
- 25 days (5 weeks) of paid vacation annually, plus 3 Spiritual Days
- Company closure from December 25th to January 1
- Annual Lifestyle benefits (reimbursements for gym memberships, fitness equipment, etc)
- A remote-first, flexible work environment
- A home-office stipend to set you up for success
- Annual company retreats
- Paid parental leave
- ….. and many more!
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our organization. We are committed to equal employment opportunities and encourage applications from people of all race, religion, colour, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
remote work