[Hiring] Principal Security Engineer @OpenZeppelin

Role Description

We are looking for a Principal Solana Developer to set the technical direction for our work on the SVM. This is not a seat on an existing Solana team: you are the person who defines what OpenZeppelin's Solana practice looks like, in the open and under your own name, so your reputation compounds with ours.

Your first focus is our confidential computing track on Solana:

• Porting onchain fully homomorphic encryption primitives to the SVM runtime.
• Designing the confidential token standard and the SDK patterns on top of it.
• Building the developer abstractions that make it usable.

This engagement runs into 2027, is public, and is coordinated directly with the Solana Foundation. The open design questions are yours to own:

• Access control list storage cost.
• Program upgradability and governance.
• How to express confidential DeFi flows idiomatically on Solana rather than transliterating them from EVM.

Beyond that engagement, you are the SVM technical lead across our portfolio:

• Shaping how we scope and staff Solana audits.
• Contributing to our open source libraries and tooling.
• Giving the security research team the depth they need when a program lands on their desk.

Within this, you will:

• Lead our Solana workstreams end to end, from architecture and implementation through audit preparation, deployment and post launch hardening.
• Build production grade programs and libraries where security is the primary constraint, not an afterthought.
• Own the hard design questions of a young ecosystem: storage and compute cost models, upgradability and governance, and idiomatic patterns for primitives with no Solana precedent yet.
• Run client facing roadmap and design discussions independently.
• Raise the level of everyone around you: review the team's Solana work, set the standards it is held to, and shorten the ramp for the people coming in behind you.
• Represent OpenZeppelin in the ecosystem: engage with the Solana Foundation, core teams and standards discussions, publish the work, and contribute to our open source libraries and tooling.
• Use AI as a core daily tool: build agents, skills and workflows that compound the team's leverage, apply it directly to security work, and share what works back to the team.
• Collaborate with our blockchain security researchers on cross team research and protocol level threat analysis.

Qualifications

• 3+ years building on Solana in production.
• Demonstrated ability to lead the work.
• Deep SVM fluency.
• Productive in Anchor and comfortable working directly against the runtime.
• A security first mindset.
• An AI native workflow.
• Fluency in client facing communication (English).
• Alignment with OpenZeppelin's values.

Requirements

• Programs you shipped that other people depend on.
• You have owned the architecture and delivery of a multi quarter workstream.
• Reason about Solana's constraints natively, not by analogy to the EVM.
• You think adversarially about every line of code you write.
• You have measurable productivity gains using AI tools.

Benefits

• Meet your teammates at company gatherings around the world.
• Enjoy the flexibility of fully remote work.
• Take the time you need with flexible time off.
• Grow your family with 8 weeks of paid leave for primary caregivers, 4 weeks for secondary caregivers, and a one-time $3,600 baby bonus.
• Build your ideal home office with up to $500 in equipment support.
• Stay covered with medical insurance.
• Keep growing with learning and development opportunities.
• Get a monthly stipend for your preferred co-working space.