LayerZero is hiring a Protocol Engineer in Engineering — Vancouver, BC. The overview below is synthesized from the employer posting on job-boards.greenhouse.io: factual requirements and scope are preserved, but prose is rewritten with editorial context. Verify details and apply via the employer link.
LayerZero
The Future is Omnichain.
Founded in 2021, LayerZero’s vision is to create a community of cross-chain developers, building dApps that are no longer constrained by individual blockchain capabilities. With LayerZero's simple, generic messaging protocol, builders will develop cross-chain dApps designed to unify the power of individual blockchains.
We are funded by the best investors in the world including:
a16z, Sequoia, PayPal, Binance Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Uniswap Labs, Circle Ventures, Delphi Digital, and many more.
ABOUT THE ROLE
Day-to-day scope for the Protocol Engineer as described in the posting:
As a Protocol Engineer, you'll work on the core infrastructure that underpins decentralized interoperability. You will design and implement core protocol components that operate across heterogeneous chains with rigorous security and performance constraints.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
Day-to-day scope for the Protocol Engineer as described in the posting:
- Design and implement core protocol contracts and logic on both EVM and non-EVM chains (e.g., message validators, data availability mechanisms, proof verification).
- Collaborate with various teams to develop new system primitives, validate security assumptions, and improve protocol robustness.
- Own components across their lifecycle: architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration.
- Contribute to high-assurance engineering practices: formal verification, invariant testing, simulation frameworks, fuzzing, and audit readiness.
- Investigate emerging cryptographic techniques and novel designs to enhance trust minimization and scalability.
- Optimize for correctness and safety in gas-constrained environments, with an emphasis on upgradeability, modularity, and composability.
- Keep pace with changes across LayerZero-supported chains to ensure cross-chain compatibility and performance.
ABOUT YOU
Company context from the listing:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Strong smart contract development experience in Solidity or equivalent languages, with a focus on correctness, modularity, and gas efficiency.
- Have built protocol-level infrastructure: bridges, interoperability layers, state sync systems, light clients, or equivalent.
- Write clear, well-tested, and secure code and have strong opinions on security models and upgradeability patterns.
- Familiar with distributed systems fundamentals and have good intuition around adversarial conditions in blockchain environments.
- Experience working with workflow engines.
- Previous experience with blockchain technologies, smart contracts, and decentralized finance is a strong plus.
The base salary for this position ranges from $120,000/year up to $250,000/year. Salary is based on a number of factors and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
Equal Opportunity Employer
LayerZero Labs is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. LayerZero Labs is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other legally protected status.
Build a standout application
For the Protocol Engineer at LayerZero, reviewers look for concise evidence over buzzwords. Mirror the language of the posting sparingly, quantify support or delivery outcomes, and show how you handled ambiguity, time-zone collaboration and user empathy. Keep your resume to impact, keep your cover note to one page, and link to artifacts — tickets resolved, docs shipped, dashboards owned — that prove you can operate in a fast-moving Web3 team. Prepare to discuss a time you turned a confusing user report into a clear fix and how you measure quality in support and operations.
Web3 hiring values reliability: on-time follow-through, clear writing, and a track record of improving runbooks and tooling. Treat the application as a work sample. For interviews, be ready to walk through how you prioritize across time zones, handle a difficult user, and decide when to escalate versus resolve directly. Show how you document decisions so the next teammate benefits.
In a distributed Web3 org, trust builds through written clarity. Use the cover note to demonstrate it.