Software / Systems Architect

Consensys•New York, NY

48d•Remote

About The Position

Consensys Incorporated is an independent blockchain infrastructure company, spun out of Consensys Software Inc. We build and operate neutral, institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure that connects banks, asset managers, custodians, and financial market infrastructures to digital asset networks. The platform spans a sequencer and coordinator, a ZK proving stack, cross-ledger interoperability, privacy and settlement components, and the infrastructure that runs all of it in production for clients with contractual commitments. This is a hands-on role where you will write code, build proofs of concept, and be in design reviews. The role requires someone who has shipped something themselves in the last year.

Requirements

Designed distributed systems and built them — recent, hands-on, in a language we use (Kotlin, Go, Rust, Solidity, TypeScript, Zig).
Strong hands-on background of Software Development/Engineering, 8+ years.
Ability to hold a large system in their head, identify integration issues, reason down to a detailed technical level (failure modes, coupling, scaling issues), and communicate effectively.
Ethereum and EVM knowledge, or the demonstrated ability to acquire it quickly from adjacent distributed-systems work.
Ability to write clearly, producing design documents and diagrams acceptable to a bank's architecture team.
Credibility in technical discussions with institutional architects regarding resilience, key custody, finality, and privacy.
Pragmatism and the ability to recognize when a simple architecture is the best solution.
Decisiveness under ambiguity, making calls when Product, client requirements, and protocol constraints conflict.
Experience architecting for secure mission-critical systems.

Nice To Haves

ZK proof systems — enough to reason about cost, latency, and trust assumptions.
Privacy technologies: privacy pools, MPC, trusted execution, tokenisation frameworks.
Regulated financial infrastructure — payments, clearing, settlement, custody.
Understanding of governance dynamics and key stakeholders within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Experience of cloud and infra deployments and topologies.
Experience in Fintech/Banking/Trading or similar domains.

Responsibilities

Architecture across the platform — how the sequencer, coordinator, proving stack, interop layer, privacy components and infrastructure fit together, and where the seams are.
Cross-ledger interoperability architecture.
Turning institutional requirements into designs, including availability, finality, privacy isolation, RBAC, key custody, and emergency deployment.
Building proofs of concept in partnership with the Engineering team.
Conducting design reviews and making architecture decisions, documenting reasoning and discarded options.
Determining build versus buy decisions for third-party components.
Providing technical depth in client and partner deep-dives.
Making final architecture decisions, time-boxing spikes and PoCs, and documenting discarded paths.
Owning the design so other people can build, providing interfaces, constraints, and written decisions.
Using AI daily to explore designs, write and test PoCs, and draft ADRs, and setting this practice for implementers.
Creating designs that survive production, considering availability, finality, rollback, and proving upgrades as architecture constraints.