Salary: $80,000-90,000 USD (other currencies available) + token allocation from cheqd’s employee pool
Type: Full-time
Start: May 2024 onwards
Location: London (UK) / Remote. Our core team is based in London, but we welcome applicants from +/-4 hours time zones.
About the role
We’re seeking a Senior Full Stack Engineer with deep experience ( 3-5 years) working with TypeScript and preferably within the Cosmos ecosystem or having a solid background in Proof of Stake networks, such as Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana, to join cheqd.
cheqd is an innovative Web 3.0 startup building private and secure mechanisms for exchanging digital identity online, enabled through a decentralised blockchain network.
The ideal candidate should have a deep interest in open source software, blockchain, decentralised finance (DeFi), and self-sovereign identity (SSI) with a passion for establishing entirely new paradigms for how data is handled on the Web.
You would report directly to our Lead Engineer and be responsible for designing and building APIs and user-facing applications. We are looking for software leaders with broad experience, a desire to shape the culture of a new team, and a passion for mentoring others. This role will require open-source collaboration and good communication with ecosystem developers.
We’re new, but we are moving fast. cheqd started in March 2021 and is backed by Outlier Ventures, Evernym, Titan Block, Torque, 3GR and a consortium of private investors. We would love it if you join us on our mission of liberating data for individuals and giving people control of their privacy.
To find out more about what we have achieved in the past year and where we are heading in the next, check out our reflection on 2023 blog, and our Product Vision and Roadmap for 2024.
Your mission in your first year at cheqd
Our engineering team has six developers working in a remote-first model across different time zones.
Expanding the team further, and as a Senior Full-Stack Engineer, you would own and support various parts of the development of our product, Creds.xyz.
Creds.xyz currently consists of serverless and hosted backend services written in TypeScript, and client applications written in Svelte Kit and TypeScript, hosted on Cloudflare’s edge network. The code is closed source, as part of the subscription-based paid product suite cheqd is offering, incorporating integrations with partnering stacks, namely Walt.id’s identity backend services, along with internally developed data points, predominantly being (Credentials-as-a-Service or CaaS).
What you will do
We expect you to build web/mobile client apps and libraries, web APIs for client apps, and serverless web backends. The ideal candidate may have this role evolve into a more senior engineering role in the team.
Your responsibilities would include:
Design, develop and maintain user-facing features for Creds.xyz web applications.
Implement responsive and intuitive UI/UX designs and server-rendered reusable components in Svelte Kit and TypeScript.
Collaborate with designers and product managers to iterate on user feedback and improve the overall user experience.
Build & deploy Serverless apps on cloud providers such as Cloudflare (we use Cloudflare Pages, Workers, Queues, Hyperdrive and more).
Define architecture for new token/identity wallets in conjunction with the CTO/Lead Engineer in line with new product requirements.
In general, this category may involve building from scratch and supporting our partners' external developer teams.
Build Web APIs for internal and external utilisation
Develop and maintain RESTful APIs to facilitate B2B interactions and integrations with auto-generated API documentation using Swagger, OpenAPI, or ReDoc.
Write or improve client application APIs for interfaces such as GraphQL, JSON-RPC, etc.
Implement secure authentication and authorisation mechanisms for API endpoints.
Strong background in SQL such as PostgreSQL NoSQL databases such as MongoDB Redis.
Be interested in promoting good developer relationships (DevRel), especially in open-source/blockchain projects.
Collaborate with stakeholders to understand business requirements and design API solutions that meet their needs.
Performance optimisation, following Security and compliance best practices
Monitor and optimise application performance, including server-side rendering (SSR) performance in Svelte Kit.
Identify and address bottlenecks and performance issues to ensure a smooth and responsive user experience.
Implement caching strategies and other optimisations to improve overall application performance.
Implement best practices for security, including data encryption, secure authentication mechanisms, and protection against common vulnerabilities.
Stay updated with industry standards and regulations related to blockchain technology, self-sovereign identity (or decentralised identity) and verifiable credentials.
Documentation and Knowledge Sharing/mentoring
Write and maintain comprehensive documentation for codebase, APIs, and system architecture.
Capture and generate ideas that may exist outside the engineering team's immediate view to drive our product's broad, revolutionary functionality.
Assess external open-source projects in the broader self-sovereign identity (SSI), Cosmos, other blockchain ecosystems to identify areas of collaboration.
Mentor junior engineers, conduct code reviews, and share best practices to promote knowledge sharing and professional growth within the team.
Foster a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous learning within the engineering team.
Your previous experience and skills
We do NOT expect a candidate to know every single language or framework mentioned above, although strong experience with Svelte and/or React is necessary. The ideal candidate is a good specialist who can flex across various stacks and be competent at picking up new frameworks where deemed necessary.
You would typically work with other engineers in the development team and have the flexibility to choose frameworks/languages you are more comfortable with maintaining.
3-5+ years of strong and heterogeneous application development experience in multiple languages/frameworks is a must-have:
You must have played a significant role in developing apps for at least two categories of clients: web app, mobile app, desktop app, and web backend.
Strong experience in writing web backends and APIs. Any popular languages, such as Node.js, Python, Scala, etc, are acceptable.
Strong experience in web app development (any popular framework such as Svelte Kit, React, Vue). Native mobile app development (React Native preferred; Swift/Objective-C, Kotlin is nice to have).
Strong experience with application architecture and RESTful API design.
Competence with a systems-level language such as C, C++, Rust, Go.
Experience with or an interest in DevRel (developer relationships), especially in the open-source community, is a must-have.
Excellent command of spoken/written English is essential. You must be good at technical writing and explaining complex concepts in documentation for use by other developers.
A public history of contributing to/collaborating with an open-source project is desirable.
Prior experience with blockchain application development (especially Cosmos, Hyperledger Indy, or another self-sovereign identity framework) is highly desirable.
Experience developing DApps on proof-of-work consensus networks such as Solidity on Ethereum is also acceptable, but must always also demonstrate an understanding of other platforms.
Experience and / or desire to learn blockchain interactive JS / TS libraries such as web3.js, CosmJS.
Familiarity with decentralised storage solutions such as IPFS, Storj, and BitTorrent.
Experience with digital identity, especially self-sovereign identity, standards/implementations such as Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs), or Hyperledger Indy/Aries is desirable.
If you don’t have prior experience, you must have a solid drive to learn how to build blockchain applications.
You are genuinely passionate about blockchain and privacy-preserving technology such as self-sovereign identity (SSI)
You want to be a part of the innovation that is orchestrated by blockchain, digital identity, self-sovereign identity, fintech or DeFi.
You are self-motivated and able to work in a fast-paced environment. You love to constantly learn and keep abreast of trends and developments in the industry.
Personal experience using identity wallets, cryptocurrencies, crypto wallets, decentralised exchanges, lending protocols, etc
How we’ll measure your success
Overall adoption of the Creds.xyz product suite for our current and prospective partners
Delivery of web services and optimisations improving the overall developer experience of Creds.xyz
Consistently providing critical analysis on peers' code
Demonstrating a commitment to open-sourcing code and contributing to the community
About us
cheqd is a ground-breaking startup in the space of self-sovereign identity (SSI). SSI is a new paradigm for exchanging trusted digital data related to people, companies, and things in a much more secure and privacy-preserving fashion that puts people in control of their data.
Our mission is to make digital identity more accessible, inclusive, and commercially sustainable. Our core product is a blockchain network that makes exchanging and paying for trusted data easy, inclusive, and secure. We built this core on blockchain technology, as we believe no single company should be in control of such critical Web infrastructure.
Our vision is that this new form of digital identity applies beyond just the financial industry and will be transformative for almost every industry sector imaginable. Through our network, anyone can verify identities quickly and securely with the ability for organisations to check the data to be compensated for their work.
Our differentiator is that our software rewards all parties involved in a trusted data ecosystem: from the individuals the data belongs to, the reputable organisations that issue and receive digital credentials, and the blockchain node operators on cheqd’s network that facilitate value exchange in a decentralised and democratic manner.
Whilst commercial viability is key, this can’t be to the detriment of inclusion, privacy and sustainability, which we will uphold as principles. Read more about our vision for new business models for digital identity.
We have published content through our blog, YouTube channel, X/Twitter, and Telegram. We are eager to engage with people who are serious about the space and, expect someone to have dedicated some time to understand what we’re about when applying.
Diversity & Inclusion
At cheqd, we celebrate differences, believe that inclusion is critical to our success and that diversity brings value, and seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Please let us know if you require any accommodations during the recruitment process. We are open to supporting candidates working remotely anywhere worldwide as long as they can be satisfied under applicable employment laws.