Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Institute of Free Technology is focused on creating communication infrastructure for a freer internet. They are seeking a Decentralised Messaging Engineer to implement messaging protocols and contribute to the development of their SDK, ensuring reliable and secure communication solutions.
Responsibilities
- Implement our messaging protocols in our reference SDK, translating protocol specs into reliable, production-quality Rust
- Own the API design and developer experience of the SDK surface — abstractions, ergonomics, and developer-facing documentation
- Contribute to messaging protocol specifications alongside the team
- As a member of a small team, you'll wear many hats — picking up problems outside your immediate lane, learning as you go, and growing with the team
- Write clear technical documentation and participate in async design discussions with collaborators across the project
Skills
- Deep familiarity with real-world instant messaging systems - you've worked on, contributed to, or spent serious time understanding how systems like Signal, Matrix, XMPP, or similar are built, where they make tradeoffs, and where they struggle
- Experience with decentralised computing - peer-to-peer systems, distributed networks, or decentralised application infrastructure
- Comfort working directly with cryptographic primitives - signatures, ciphers, and key exchanges and an understanding of secure private messaging principles such as forward secrecy, post-compromise security, and key management
- Solid Rust experience: comfortable writing reliable, maintainable code in a team setting
- Previous experience with Web3, blockchains, open protocols, and the values that underpin them
- A strong alignment to our principles: https://logos.co/manifesto/
- Experience with Post-Quantum Cryptography and its application to secure messaging
- Experience with MLS (Message Layer Security / RFC 9420) or the OpenMLS library specifically
- You've authored or contributed to an open specification
- Familiarity with P2P transport layers such as Waku or libp2p
- Experience working for an open source organisation
- Comfortable working remotely and asynchronously
Company Overview