The Web3 Foundation nurtures and stewards technologies and applications for the decentralized web. We collaborate with cutting-edge developer teams, researchers and community leaders to strengthen and extend the uses of decentralized technologies; building the future of identity, privacy, financial markets, commerce, and more.

Our core project at the moment is Polkadot, a protocol designed to connect blockchains and allow them to interoperate, share security and more. In addition, we are supporting the development of a number of technologies that form the Web 3.0 tech stack - such as decentralized messaging, distributed storage and secret management.

About the Role & Web3 Foundation Grants Program

We're seeking an enthusiastic decentralized technologies developer to help our grants team in evaluating software developed by grantees as well as the technical merit of applications for grant funding. The Web3 Foundation is committed to distributing a significant amount of funding for the development of open-source software that will contribute to the creation of the Web3 technologies stack. Once we have selected the projects to fund, we ensure they make progress on their milestones so that their software is developed according to their roadmap and can be used by the wider community.

The purpose of this role is to help the grants team to determine the legitimacy of grant applications as well as deliverables from grantees. This involves quickly understanding different technology stacks, the underlying requirements of the software, and performing functional testing to determine if the requirements have been met. Depending on the project, it may also involve review and inspection of codebases in a variety of languages and frameworks, such as Rust, and JavaScript. You will gain an understanding of Polkadot, Substrate and other related blockchain technologies.

Please see grants.web3.foundation for more background on the process in which you will be contributing to.

We are a lean team with a flat organization. This position is based in Zug, Switzerland. Remote work within Europe is possible.

Responsibilities

Make decisions on grant giving together with the Grants Committee
Evaluate grant milestone delivery, including reviewing documentation, compiling their projects, and functional testing of these projects
Liaise with the applying teams, in order to answer their questions and better understand their deliverables
Liaise with relevant teams (e.g., legal, finance, collaborations, community building) at agreed points of the application process
Contribute to the overall management and improvement of the grants program
Work alongside other teams such as Technical Education and Research

Requirements

Solid programming experience, ideally in Rust and/or Javascript, Go, C++
Knowledge and understanding of blockchain technologies and applications
Technical ability to evaluate software implementation: setting up environments; compiling complex projects and their dependencies; reviewing and analyzing code
Technical ability to test software: reading, writing and evaluating test plans; running and evaluating automated test suites; reviewing and testing functionality
Ability to work in a variety of development environments and languages
Approachable personality and clear communication style in English

A plus

Experience with systematic evaluation of technology projects
Experience with Substrate and proficiency in Docker
Experience with Linux, and other Unix-based OSes
Technical education experience (formal or informal)
Demonstrated ability to manage relationships with many external parties
Experience collaborating with technical teams in the APAC region

Benefits

Competitive compensation and employee benefits
Regular company retreats at unique locations located around Europe
Opportunity to work in a multinational, high-performance team with diverse backgrounds (i.e. physics, computer science, machine-learning algorithm design, legal, financial products, management consulting, marketing & advertising, etc.)

To apply to this position, we invite you to answer a few questions in the application form, and to submit your CV and a cover letter, telling us a bit about yourself and your motivation to join us.

For more information about us, visit us on the:

Web3 Foundation website: https://web3.foundation/
Polkadot website: https://polkadot.network/
Github: https://github.com/w3f