Protocol Labs is hiring a

Web3 ResDev

IPFS is an open-source project that cares deeply about supporting its many communities -- from distributed web developers, to browsers, to blockchain projects, to data storage hosts. Having healthy communities is critical for the long-term health of IPFS by ensuring that all contributors and users are welcome, engaged, and getting the help they need.

At Protocol Labs, research development (ResDev) is an even more advanced set of work. In addition to supporting our on-going services and protocols, a developer relations person would help advance the next generation of blockchain and Web3 technologies. This means rallying developers and scientists around the world to help advance the state of the art, exploring novel technologies, and bridging research areas into documentation and tools the community can build on.

In 2022 alone, we expect to launch:

• FVM - with an entirely new set of APIs, programming models, and sample applications
• Upgrades to the core Filecoin protocol
• A new analytics suite and data repository
• New compute over data execution
• VDFs and SpaceVDFs
• And many more

Each one of these projects cannot simply be launched and assume success. We must take ownership to bring the community along, educate interested parties and encourage coordination and collaboration in their development and roadmaps. Specifically, across these many investments, we would like someone to coordinate:

• Keeping ResDev documentation (new protocols, FVM, VDF, etc) up to date and complete
• Having relevant/new demos for new research releases (including case studies)
• Organizing community events around new releases (e.g. having proper materials ready for presentations (a simple deck that could allow anyone to organize a meetup once a quarter that had demos/docs for "Here's everything ResDev launched since we last met")
• Creating/maintaining/submitting talks to important research conferences
• Creating language specific bindings for new projects (e.g. Python, Javascript, Rust, Go) that feel native and are testable
• Etc.

This could be via building an internal team, managing an external workforce, partnering with the ecosystem and external firms to handle key components, or some combination of all of the above. Goals that we might expect from such a role would include:

• Publication of testable documentation for all externally facing functions developed by ResDev over the year and measuring the performance of the website
• Publication of 5+ demos and 5+ case studies for each new project (FVM, protocol changes, data mining, etc)
• Produce content and encourage local individuals to hold 100 meetups in 5+ cities about Protocol Labs research development
• Enabling partnerships with 5+ research teams (10-20 individuals) to actively work on projects related to the Web3.0 stack
• 100+ people in a ResDev community space (e.g. Slack)
• Event coordination:
• Next edition of the DI2F workshop with 30+ submissions and 50W attendees.
• Research Intensive Workshop 2022 and producing 10 solutions (RFCs, i.e., spec documents) for the topic we have chosen.
• Web3 research event at which topics include a list of important problems owned by external party but with hefty support from PL
• Quarterly one-day events around research projects (e.g. Vector Commitments)
• Launch tools to collect user feedback across email, StackOverflow, Discord, Twitter, Slack, GitHub and participate in 4+ backlog management sessions over the course of the year to flesh out user stories with the end user in mind

We expect this person not to do all these activities themselves, but to have a vision about what makes for a wonderful developer experience, contract/coordinate/hire the necessary resources to enable this, and have a high bar for quality to which they hold all of Protocol Labs and our community. They will also be the face of IPFS to the community and our communities’ advocate to the IPFS working groups. Through it all -- the tactical and strategic work -- your warmth and thoughtfulness will be needed to maintain welcoming spaces for our community members.

Ideal candidates will have...

• Previously managed technical relationships in a partner or sales engineering capacity globally or in multiple countries
• Advised on partner projects’ application architecture and done co-development in Github with them
• Familiarity with peer-to-peer, decentralized, or blockchain technologies
• Experience with developer relations and developer support
• A technical background, and can code in one or more languages (preferably Rust, Python, Go, Javascript/TypeScript)
• Strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills
• And will enjoy taking initiative to solve open-ended problems

Bonus Points…

• Experience writing documentation or producing other content to synthesize and simplify technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience with P2P, blockchain, and dapp development tools and workflows
• Experience speaking at conferences, developer summits, or virtual events
• Experience working in or managing open source software communities
• Experience teaching, writing, or hosting workshops

Apply Now: