Validator Engineer
Ritual is seeking a Validator Engineer to ensure the uptime, performance, and reliability of its validators. The role involves managing upgrades, snapshots, and synchronization performance, while serving as the primary technical contact for validator operators. This position is integral to Ritual's mission of building a sovereign execution layer for AI, with its private testnet already operational.
Key responsibilities include building and automating both bare-metal and cloud deployments for validators using Ritual's existing simulation framework. The engineer will orchestrate client upgrades, parameter changes, and hard forks with zero downtime across staging and mainnet environments. Additionally, the role involves profiling and patching critical paths for optimal performance of execution and consensus clients, as well as producing run-books, maintaining clear documentation, and actively supporting validator operators via Discord to ensure healthy staking participation.
The ideal candidate has over four years of experience operating high-availability distributed systems, including direct experience running Proof-of-Stake validators on EVM-based chains. Proficiency in Go and Rust is required, with the ability to read, debug, and extend both Execution Layer and Consensus Layer client code. A strong grasp of protocol-level concepts such as fork-choice, evidence handling, slashing conditions, and state synchronization is essential. Expertise in Kubernetes/Helm, Terraform, and CI/CD workflows is also necessary, along with advanced Linux skills, deep networking knowledge, and a focus on system hardening and security. A passion for observability, including logs, metrics, and traces, is crucial.
Ritual offers a highly competitive compensation package, including an annual discretionary bonus and an optimized tax structure. Benefits are among the top 1% in the web3 startup space, with 100% of premiums covered for high-quality healthcare and an aggressive company 401(k) match. The position is fully remote and/or hybrid, depending on the candidate's preference, with opportunities to participate in virtual and in-person events.