Senior Blockchain Security Developer (Canton)

Own the development of the OpenZeppelin Contracts Library for Daml end-to-end: vaults, hooks, RBAC, credentials, messaging gateway, accounts, and more. The audited primitives Canton developers will import.

Lead the technical design and implementation of the year-1 Reference Implementations: privacy-preserving DEX, lending protocol, cross-chain stablecoin settlement, and confidential auction launchpad.

Implement and shepherd the OZ Daml versions of CIP-56, CIP-86, CIP-103, and CIP-104. Coordinate with Digital Asset on spec evolution and with ChainSafe on middleware alignment.

Run client-facing roadmap, design, and milestone discussions with Digital Asset, the Canton Foundation, and ChainSafe.

Collaborate with OpenZeppelin's auditors and security researchers on threat models, audit prep, and full-stack reviews for every Reference Implementation.

Use AI systems as core daily tools. Extend them: build agents, skills, and workflows that compound the team's leverage on the Canton engagement and beyond.

Apply AI directly to security work and share what works back to the team: audit assistance, invariant generation, spec analysis, fuzzing harnesses, custom evals

Contribute developer-experience and security feedback upstream into the Canton protocol, Splice, the Daml SDK, and the Splice Wallet Kernel.

Conduct open-ended research around privacy-preserving DeFi, multi-party authorization patterns, and Canton-specific primitives; you'll have time to publish and contribute back to OpenZeppelin's body of knowledge.

Production Daml fluency . You have shipped non-trivial Daml in production. You understand templates, choices, controllers/observers/signatories, multi-party authorization, sub-transaction views, and propose/accept patterns as first-class primitives. Running an SV, contributing to Splice internals, governance, or Canton Coin tokenomics.

3+ years of experience in UTXO-based protocol development . You can reason about Canton's privacy boundaries the way an EVM developer reasons about storage slots. Prior production work in a privacy-preserving or UTXO-based architecture (Canton, Cardano, Midnight, Zcash, Aleo, Mina, or similar) is expected.

3+ years of experience on DeFi engineering in production . you have shipped non-trivial DeFi primitives in production: AMMs, vaults (ERC-4626 or equivalent), lending protocols, cross-chain settlement. You understand the security pitfalls of each.

A security-first mindset . this is non-negotiable. You think adversarially about every line of code you write, and you have demonstrable experience either auditing, breaking, or hardening production systems — published threat models, audit reports, responsible disclosures, or equivalent output.

Library / SDK API design taste . You've built reusable, import-first developer libraries, not just applications. You have opinions on extensibility patterns (hooks, modular components, override points) and on what makes an audited primitive pleasant to consume.

Cross-chain interoperability exposure . Production work with at least one major cross-chain messaging protocol (Chainlink CCIP, LayerZero, Wormhole, Axelar, or similar).

Institutional / compliance design fluency: You can design with credential gates, multi-party attestation, custody flows, and compliance hooks as native constraints.

An AI-native workflow . Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent is your daily driver. You have measurable productivity gains to show for it and clear opinions on how to use these tools well. You have shipped at least one non-trivial AI-powered tool, agent, or automation pipeline in production using the Anthropic SDK, MCP, custom evals, or comparable.

Experience applying AI to security work: You've already used AI as a serious instrument in security workflows: audit assistance, vulnerability research, fuzzing, invariant or spec analysis, static-analysis augmentation, or similar.

Fluency in client-facing communication (English).

Autonomy and proactivity.

Cryptography or financial-engineering background . Privacy-preserving DeFi rewards both.

Institutional finance background . Capital-markets microstructure, custody, compliance flows, RWA tokenization, settlement.

Hands-on experience with non-EVM ecosystems . Starknet, Stellar/Soroban, Arbitrum Stylus, Aptos, Move-based chains.

Open-source contributions to widely-used libraries in the smart-contract or AI-tooling space.

Our interview process is designed to be fast (we target ~30 days from first call to offer) while still giving both sides a clear "yes." The full process consists of:

Recruiter interview (30-45 minutes)

Manager interview (60 minutes)

Peer interview (45 minutes)

Paid technical work trial

Please let us know if you require any accommodations for the interview process, and we’ll do our best to provide assistance.

As part of OpenZeppelin’s recruitment process, we may use automated tools, including artificial intelligence, to assist in reviewing applications and assessing candidate qualifications. These tools are used to support our People team by identifying relevant skills and experience, and are not used to make decisions solely by automated means. All hiring decisions involve human review. Any personal data provided as part of your application will be processed in accordance with OpenZeppelin’s Data Privacy Notice .

If you have questions about this recruitment process or would like to request human review of your application, please contact us at talent@openzeppelin.com.