Research
Founding Cryptography Engineer
Support high-assurance audits with deep cryptography — ZK, MPC, and formal arguments applied to client systems and internal research.
Remote
Work from anywhere with overlap across EU / US / APAC when collaboration matters.
Compensation
Competitive cash + meaningful founding equity
About the role
As a founding cryptography engineer you will strengthen Orion's audit practice on the hardest problems: proof systems, key ceremonies, and protocol math that generic checklists miss. You partner with auditors to validate designs and document risks clients can act on.
Responsibilities
- Design and specify MPC / threshold signing schemes (GG20, CGGMP21 and successors) for institutional custody
- Prototype and harden STARK-based circuits for proofs of reserve, solvency, and compliance state
- Write clear security models, threat analyses, and implementation guides for engineering partners
- Review protocol changes for cryptographic soundness and side-channel risk
- Publish selected results when open science strengthens the ecosystem
Requirements
- Deep fluency with applied cryptography (signatures, MPC, ZK, or related areas)
- Experience taking cryptographic designs from paper or prototype into production code
- Comfort reading academic literature and translating it into practical constraints
- Strong written communication — specs and threat models matter as much as code
- Bias toward verification: tests, formal methods, or adversarial review
Nice to have
- Prior work on wallet / custody / HSM-adjacent systems
- Experience with Lean, Coq, or Certora-style verification
- Open-source cryptography library contributions
- Familiarity with AWS Nitro Enclaves or confidential computing
Benefits
- Meaningful founding equity
- Flexible PTO and remote-first culture
- Dedicated research budget and conference travel
- Home-office stipend and hardware signing kit
- Health coverage as we formalize benefits
- Regular in-person team gatherings
How to apply
Share a short note about relevant work, links to code or portfolio pieces, and anything else that helps us understand how you think. You can also email careers@oriontrustlabs.com with the role title in the subject line.