Team and Responsibilities

We’re creating a general-purpose private smart contract layer for Ethereum, affectionately dubbed ‘Aztec 3’.

We utilise bleeding-edge cryptography in our tech stack to realise private transactions on a public blockchain network, particularly in the realm of zero-knowledge cryptography.

As a result we possess a world-class R&D team that has co-authored the Plonk and Plookup ZK-SNARK protocols. Plonk in particular is rapidly becoming an industry standard ZK-SNARK technology.

We are looking for experienced cryptographers to expand our R&D team and allow us to further enhance the state-of-the-art when it comes to generating proofs of private computation.

Role focus

• Research techniques to improve both the constant and asymptotic performance of our cryptographic protocols
• Perform literature reviews to identify new developments that could improve the Prover/Verifier efficiency of our cryptographic protocols (or replace them entirely)
• Develop security proofs for our ZK-SNARK circuit architectures
• Liaise with our applied cryptographers to assist them with implementing our cryptographic protocols in software

Required experience

• PhD-level qualification in cryptography or a related field
• 4+ combined years of experience in post-PhD cryptographic research in academia and/or industry
• Lead author in one or more papers in the field of zero-knowledge cryptography
• Familiarity with algorithms, data structures and basic programming concepts
• Ability to read and understand software implementations of cryptographic protocols written in C++
• A penchant for clear and comprehensive documentation
• Able to provide clear and constructive feedback for more junior cryptographers / applied cryptographers, mentoring where necessary
• A passion for blockchain, its potential, and what we’re trying to achieve.