cheqd Jobs

Salary: £60,000 - £75,000 (other currencies available) + token allocation from cheqd’s employee pool

Type: Full-time

Start: May 2022 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 looking for a Blockchain Engineer with deep experience working with Typescript and / or within the Cosmos ecosystem 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 the CTO and be responsible for designing and building our core ledger software, APIs, and client 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 has raised $3.3mn so far, 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 to individuals and giving people control of their privacy.

To find out more about what we have achieved in the past few months and where we are heading in the next, check out our blog.

Your mission in your first year at cheqd

Our engineering team currently has 6 developers working in a remote-first model across different time zones.

We are building out this team further, and as a Blockchain Engineer you would own and support various parts of development of our product; the cheqd network and cheqd's SDKs.

cheqd’s products currently consist of a backend service written in Golang, on the Cosmos blockchain framework, SDKs for mobile clients (iOS and Android) written in Rust, and blockchain nodes (our own ones) hosted on Digital Ocean and Hetzner. Our vision is to open source as much of our code as possible, since the utility of our network relies on having many ecosystem participants using our software.

What you will do

We expect you to build web/mobile client apps and libraries, web APIs for client apps, serverless web backends, and core ledger code. The ideal candidate may have this role evolve into a more senior engineering role in the team.

Your responsibilities would include

• Build support for cheqd’s network/tokens in wallet applications
  • Build integrations for cheqd in existing wallet applications such as Keplr (the most common wallet for Cosmos, written in TypeScript)
  • Build and improve the wallet integrations cheqd has in the mobile/desktop apps of our partners.
  • Build and improve wallet integrations for web apps, which are typically written in React.js, Vue.js, or Angular.js and / or respective SSR frameworks as NextJS, NuxtJS.
  • Build & deploy Serverless apps on cloud providers such as Cloudflare Workers, KV and / or AWS Lambda, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB.
  • Define architecture for new token/identity wallets in conjunction with the CTO/engineering team in-line with new product requirements.
  • In general, this category may involve building from scratch as well as supporting external developer teams of our partners.
• Build integrations for cheqd’s token/network with web backend services
  • Design and improve the architecture that allows us to connect to CEXs (centralised exchanges for cryptocurrency) such as Coinbase, Kraken, Bittrex etc.
  • Write or improve APIs used by client applications, for interfaces such as JSON-RPC.
  • This category might require development work on core ledger (written in Golang), libraries (often written in a range of languages such as Node.js, Python, TypeScript), or web backend services (either serverless or server-based).
  • Strong background in SQL such as MySQL, Postgres, MariaDB & NoSQL databases, namely MongoDB, Redis, Firebase.
• Innovate and set standards in the open source ecosystem for blockchain identity projects
  • Write easy-to-understand and structured documentation for the assets built by you, for use by the open source community.
  • Write API documentation and guides, with easy-to-use tools such as Swagger or Postman Collections.
  • Plan the product roadmap and implications on DevOps with the leadership team.
  • Capture and generate ideas that may exist outside the immediate view of the engineering team to drive the broad, revolutionary functionality in our product.
  • Assess external open-source projects in the wider self-sovereign identity (SSI), Cosmos, other blockchain ecosystems to identify areas of collaboration.

Your previous experience and skills

We do NOT expect a candidate to know every single language or framework mentioned above. What we are looking for is a good generalist who can flex across a range of different stacks and quick at picking up new frameworks, where needed.

You would typically work with other engineers in the development team, and have the flexibility to an extent to choose frameworks/languages you are more comfortable with maintaining.

• 3-5+ years strong and heterogeneous application development experience in multiple languages/frameworks is a must-have:
  • You must have played a major role in the development of apps in at least two categories of clients: web app, mobile app, desktop app, web backend.
  • Strong experience in writing web backends and APIs. Any popular framework such as Node.js, Python, Scala etc are acceptable.
  • Strong experience in EITHER web app development (any popular framework such as React, Vue, Angular) OR native mobile app development (React Native preferred, Swift/Objective-C, Kotlin).
  • Strong experience with application architecture and RESTful API design.
  • Competence with a systems-level language such as C, C++, Rust, Go etc.**
• 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 other self-sovereign identity framework) is highly desirable.
  • Experience developing DApps on proof-of-work frameworks 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. Namely, ethers.js, web3.js, cosmjs .
  • Familiarity with decentralised storage solutions such as IPFS, BitTorrent.
  • Experience with digital identity, especially self-sovereign identity, standards/implementations such as Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs), Verifiable Credentials (VCs), or Hyperledger Aries is desirable.
  • If you don’t have prior experience, you must have a strong drive to learn building 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 cheqd network as the underlying blockchain and payment rails for our SSI current and prospective partners
• Delivery of cheqd SDK improving the overall developer experience of the cheqd network
• Consistently providing critical analysis on peers code
• Demonstrating a commitment to open sourcing code and contributing to the community

About us

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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 checking 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 belong 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 a great deal of content through our blog, YouTube channel, Twitter, and Telegram. We are eager to engage with people who are serious about the space and as such expect someone to have dedicated some time to understand what we’re about when applying.

Diversity & Inclusion

At cheqd, we celebrate differences, we believe that inclusion is critical to our success and that diversity brings value, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. If you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know. We are open to supporting candidates working remotely anywhere in the world, as long as it can be satisfied under applicable employment laws.

cheqd focuses on Identity Management, Identity, Blockchains, and Blockchain / Cryptocurrency. Their company has offices in London, United Kingdom, and Remote. They have a small team that's between 11-50 employees. To date, cheqd has raised $3.3M of funding; their latest round was closed on September 2021 at a valuation of $42.6M.

You can view their website at https://www.cheqd.io/ or find them on Twitter and LinkedIn.