Web3 Jobs at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Startups

Team and Responsibilities

We’re creating a general-purpose private smart contract layer for Ethereum, affectionately dubbed ‘Aztec 3’.

We utilise bleeding-edge cryptography in our tech stack to realise private transactions on a public blockchain network, particularly in the realm of zero-knowledge cryptography.

As a result we possess a world-class R&D team that has co-authored the Plonk and Plookup ZK-SNARK protocols. Plonk in particular is rapidly becoming an industry standard ZK-SNARK technology.

We are looking for experienced cryptographers to expand our R&D team and allow us to further enhance the state-of-the-art when it comes to generating proofs of private computation.

Role focus

Research techniques to improve both the constant and asymptotic performance of our cryptographic protocols
Perform literature reviews to identify new developments that could improve the Prover/Verifier efficiency of our cryptographic protocols (or replace them entirely)
Develop security proofs for our ZK-SNARK circuit architectures
Liaise with our applied cryptographers to assist them with implementing our cryptographic protocols in software

Required experience

• PhD-level qualification in cryptography or a related field
• 4+ combined years of experience in post-PhD cryptographic research in academia and/or industry
• Lead author in one or more papers in the field of zero-knowledge cryptography
• Familiarity with algorithms, data structures and basic programming concepts
• Ability to read and understand software implementations of cryptographic protocols written in C++
• A penchant for clear and comprehensive documentation
• Able to provide clear and constructive feedback for more junior cryptographers / applied cryptographers, mentoring where necessary
• A passion for blockchain, its potential, and what we’re trying to achieve.