Senior Staff Protocol Engineer

Position Overview

Base is on a mission to bring a million developers and a billion users onchain by building the future of open, decentralized platforms. Incubated within Coinbase and built on Optimism’s open‐source OP Stack, Base is working on scaling the Base chain 100x to enable the next billion users onchain. We are looking for a Senior Staff Protocol Engineer to join the Base Protocols team, where you will be instrumental in research, development, and scaling of the infrastructure powering the Base chain.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the research and development of new initiatives for improving and scaling Base’s throughput.
• Hack on execution and consensus client internals (geth, reth, lighthouse, etc.) to extend capacity beyond current standards.
• Improve the OP Stack by reducing the data footprint required for L1 availability.
• Assist with external scaling efforts such as PeerDAS.
• Drive technical direction, establish roadmaps, and collaborate with cross-functional teams and the wider Ethereum ecosystem.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering with a strong background in scaling, parallelization, protocols, or distributed databases.
• Proven leadership in successfully scaling high throughput systems.
• Solid understanding of EVM and client software internals (e.g., geth or reth).
• Familiarity with database internals, high performance systems, and the Ethereum scaling roadmap.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent experience in Distributed Systems or a related field.
• Experience in software parallelization, including optimistic concurrency and operation pipelining.
• Knowledge of optimized Ethereum state management approaches (e.g., Erigon/Reth’s flat DB, FirewoodDB, MonadDB).
• Familiarity with compilers, JIT compilation, and deep experience in Rust and/or Go.
• Active contributions to open source onchain projects, publications, patents, or a strong research background.

Benefits & Perks

• Compensation: $253,895—$298,700 USD (target annual salary range).
• Bonus eligibility and Equity eligibility (full time offers include these components).
• Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, and 401(k) plans.