Project Lead: libp2p
Protocol Labs is a research, development, and deployment institution for improving Internet technology. Protocol Labs leads groundbreaking internet projects, such as IPFS, the decentralized web protocol; Filecoin, a cryptocurrency incentivized storage network; and libp2p, a modular network stack for peer-to-peer apps and systems. Protocol Labs works openly, and is focused on the creation of value at a massive scale.
Job Description
This is a unique opportunity to take ownership of a massively successful open source project and carry it through its next phase of growth. libp2p is the peer-to-peer foundation used by many decentralized applications, including Ethereum 2.0, IPFS, Filecoin, and over a dozen more major blockchain and decentralization projects.
Project Leads at Protocol Labs
A Project Lead is the person who is ultimately in charge of an open source project at Protocol Labs. Project Leads define high-level strategic direction for their project, prioritize what needs to get done (and when), and decide how to allocate headcount resources to hire team members to execute on that strategy. As Project Lead of libp2p, you’ll be the public face of a major open source project, interacting often with the diverse libp2p community. You will work with key project stakeholders to ensure project success, make decisions about where to invest resources, and help define and track key metrics for the libp2p project. The Project Lead is the person who is ultimately accountable for ensuring the libp2p project’s success. This is a general manager role that’s very much like being the CEO of a (currently) 10-20 person startup. You’ll be given a budget for the project, empowered to make decisions and act autonomously, and you’ll be evaluated based on the outcomes you deliver. You’ll also have the backing and support of Protocol Labs, a globally-distributed research and engineering laboratory focused on inventing, funding, designing and building new technologies to make a better Internet.
You’ll be a great fit if you have many of these...
- Interest in peer-to-peer technologies and how they can be used to improve the Internet for all humanity.
- Interest in libp2p, including an understanding of its location-independent addressing, multiaddrs, and process addressing.
- Extensive experience in open source, including working within open source communities, being a maintainer or core contributor of a major open source project.
- Expertise and knowledge of networking and Internet protocols such as IP, ICMP and UDP.
- Interest and/or experience in protocols and products.
- You should know how to uncover user pain points, make product tradeoff decisions, thoughtfully balance competing priorities like feature-parity, time-to-market, technical debt, backward compatibility, limiting product surface area, and so forth.
- Demonstrated leadership abilities. Experience building up and running teams. Ability to delegate. Disciplined about follow up.
- The ability to recruit top players to your team, both from your own personal network and by working with recruiters.
- An entrepreneurial mindset. You should be comfortable taking smart risks.
- Strong public presentation skills, at meetings, conferences and other venues.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
What’s it like to work at Protocol Labs?
Protocol Labs mission is to improve humanity’s most important technology, the Internet. We build protocols, systems, and tools to improve how it works. Today, we are focused on how we store, locate, and move information. Our projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and more.
As a distributed team, we hire anywhere in the world, and at various levels of experience (entry, senior, staff). We look for people with unique perspectives and diverse backgrounds.
We have a great benefits package, including parental leave, contributions to your retirement, competitive pay, and unlimited time off. For U.S.-based employees, we also provide platinum-level health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family.