Web3 is a new paradigm

**About Sherlock**

Sherlock believes that a sound currency and functioning financial system should be basic human rights. Sherlock’s mission is to help create an open, uncensorable financial system that is secure enough for billions of people to trust with their life savings. 

Traditional blockchain security reviews are a good start, but it’s not enough. That's why Sherlock provides protocols with state-of-the-art, incentive-aligned audit contests, bug bounties and smart contract coverage. And why Sherlock is putting so many resources behind AI security. 

Sherlock is the only security provider that includes a warranty after each audit. Sherlock customers get up to $500k of bug bounty and exploit coverage for the first month of launch after every audit.

Sherlock is also the only security provider to serve a customer’s full security needs, including collaborative audits, audit contests, bug bounties, and coverage. 

Sherlock’s audit contests combine the best of traditional auditing with a competitive twist that results in hundreds of eyes looking at the codebase and some of the best security experts in the world surfacing issues that traditional audits miss. 

Sherlock is the leader in auditing, running more public audits than any other provider last year. The Ethereum Foundation, Aave, Optimism, Cosmos, MakerDAO (now Sky) and the biggest crypto teams in the world choose Sherlock for their security needs.

Join Sherlock’s elite team on the ground floor, backed by some of the best Web3 and Silicon Valley VC firms such as Alliance, Archetype, IDEO, CoinFund, Lattice, Spartan, A Capital, and many others. 

**Sherlock's Culture**

Sherlock's culture is fast-moving, intense, and not right for everyone. Here are some common attributes among historically successful team members at Sherlock:

**Mission-focus**
Anyone in this for reasons other than creating the best financial coordination mechanism in history will either get too demotivated to last through multi-year bear markets or get too distracted during the frothy bull markets.

**Willingness to work long, hard and smart**
If Sherlock has any advantage, it is the willingness to work harder and think with more discipline than anyone else. This includes thinking from first principles about all important decisions and always thinking in tradeoffs and bets. 

**Owner mentality**
Team members get ownership in Sherlock after a short time in this role, and each is expected to act like an owner of a Michelin-star restaurant where no detail is too small.

**Builder mentality**
Everyone at Sherlock is deep in the arena getting their hands dirty and this is a vulnerable position. There are no pure "idea people" or pure managers at Sherlock; everyone is in execution mode first and foremost.

**Customer focus**
It is too easy to sit behind a computer and build in an echo chamber. We must go out of our way to experience the customer's viewpoint as often as possible.

**Professional athlete mentality**
Professional athletes opt in to a high-performance, meritocratic culture. This creates an environment that brings out the best in people and rewards each for their respective performance. But it's also an environment where being in the 70th percentile in your role means you will have a short tenure on the team. 

**Comfort with directness and transparency**
You must be comfortable giving direct feedback to others and receiving direct feedback yourself. "Not ruffling feathers" comes at the expense of moving in a suboptimal direction for too long. Sherlock is extremely transparent internally (and with customers) which means you can get involved in decisions made in any part of Sherlock. 

**The Role**

We believe the blockchain security space is going to be fundamentally different in the next 6-24 months. Blockchain security is one of the areas of software that has experienced very little AI-related change in the last 2-3 years. We believe this is, in part, due to the novelty and complexity of blockchain exploits. As AI improves, we expect the blockchain security space to undergo massive change. 

Sherlock wants to lead this change to disrupt our current business model. This is where we need your help. 

No one knows how effective AI can be in finding blockchain vulnerabilities. Few have put significant resources into this effort. Even fewer have worked with true AI and blockchain security experts on this problem. Sherlock’s goal is to be the leader and pioneer in this area. 

We are looking for a senior Python developer with a strong track record shipping software products. This person has already proven themselves in production, brings a willingness to deep dive into the Solidity language and ecosystem, and works comfortably with LLMs in daily life. You have used LLMs in your workflow and have experimented with or even created AI products or applications. If you're serious about applying for this job and you've read this far, please email evert at sherlock dot xyz with 4-sentence answers to each of these three questions: What Python based product did you build or work on that reached real users, and what was your role? What excites you about this position specifically? Why should Sherlock select you over hundreds of other applicants?

**Your role is simple:**

**Take ownership of a core feature or process within Sherlock’s AI product, beginning with Solidity-focused workflows, and drive it end to end from design through production.**

Sherlock already has a rockstar team of developers and security researchers who can shore up your weaknesses in certain areas and ship a useful, production-ready application. And we are willing to invest deeply in your team’s success, whatever it may require. 

In terms of the skills required in your role, deep Python expertise and experience shipping SaaS or software products are essential. Comfort using LLMs in your daily workflow, and a track record of experimenting with or creating AI products or applications is expected. You should bring a willingness to deep dive into the Solidity language and ecosystem, take end-to-end ownership of a feature or process in the AI product, and put the customer first even when it means adjusting your original vision.

A strong understanding of crypto, DeFi, or smart contract security is a plus, but it's not needed to get started in this role.

Ultimately, your role is to do what no one else has accomplished so far: build a vulnerability-detecting AI in the crypto space that mitigates or entirely removes the need for human security researchers, saving teams hundreds of thousands of dollars and months of delays. 

**The day-to-day responsibilities of this role include:**
- Monitoring production AI logs and results to identify failures, regressions, and opportunities for improvement (7x weight)
- Designing and running experiments to improve parts of the AI, from prompts and retrieval to model and pipeline changes (7x weight)
- Building and maintaining robust benchmarking to measure effectiveness and catch regressions (7x weight)
- Working closely with Sherlock’s developers and researchers to stay aligned on goals and ship the right things (10x weight)
- Deep diving into blockchain and smart contract vulnerabilities to design practical solutions (8x weight)
- Staying current with practical advances in AI and LLMs that improve developer velocity and product quality (5x weight)
- Staying current with Solidity language updates, tooling, and broader EVM ecosystem changes (5x weight)

**Requirements**
- Senior-level Python experience with a track record of shipping SaaS or software products to production
- Daily use of LLMs and hands-on experience experimenting with or creating AI products or applications
- Willingness to deep dive into the Solidity language and broader EVM ecosystem

**Nice to Haves**
- Experience setting up benchmarking and monitoring for AI systems to measure effectiveness and catch regressions
- Proficiency in Solidity and familiarity with EVM tooling such as Foundry or Hardhat
- Familiarity with prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, retrieval, and vector databases

**What's in it for you**
- Attractive base (payable in fiat or crypto) + material tokens/equity + benefits
- Flexible time-off policy
- Great healthcare
- Multiple offsites each year in places like France, Argentina, Thailand, etc.
- Lead the first team to apply AI to a massive, growing industry that has seen little AI disruption so far
- Root access to the decision-making process/criteria in all areas of Sherlock and the ability to work directly with the founders
- Move quickly and get stuff done on a small, elite team that has already made a big impact in the crypto space
- Play a huge role in defining the future of Sherlock and accomplishing the goal of making crypto/DeFi accessible to everyone