About Alchemy Alchemy is the Web3 infrastructure and developer platform that powers millions of users and the world’s most innovative blockchain applications. From enabling $1+ trillion in financial transactions worldwide to scaling L2s and enabling DeFi, Alchemy provides the infrastructure and tools developers need to build reliable, scalable, and accessible experiences. Trusted by companies like JPMorgan, Stripe, Visa, Franklin Templeton, Nike, and backed by a16z, Coatue, Silver Lake, Lightspeed, and Stanford University, Alchemy is building the foundational layer for a decentralized and AI-enabled Web3 ecosystem. For more information, visit alchemy.com.
The Role Take new blockchain infrastructure and product ideas from an uncertain problem to a working system. You will help choose what to test, build the smallest experiment that answers the important questions, and turn promising results into production software. You should enjoy reading protocol specifications and unfamiliar code, talking to developers, and building enough to find out whether an idea is useful. You are also willing to stop an experiment when the evidence does not support it.
What You Will Do
- Identify developer or infrastructure problems that could justify a new blockchain capability or product, working with engineering, Product, and customer-facing teams.
- Define each experiment’s hypothesis, success criteria, constraints, and time limit before building.
- Prototype across the layers the problem requires: blockchain clients, RPC, indexing, transaction infrastructure, backend services, or smart contracts.
- Read protocol specifications and implementation code, then test assumptions with reproducible benchmarks and failure cases.
- Evaluate developer or operational value alongside technical feasibility, security, operating cost, and the effort required to support the system.
- Take validated ideas through production design, testing, rollout, observability, and operational documentation with partner teams.
- Write concise recommendations to continue, change direction, or stop, supported by the experiment’s results.
- Participate in production support and incident response for the systems you ship. Own monitoring, runbooks, and fixes after launch.
What We Are Looking For
- A track record of taking ambiguous engineering problems through working prototypes and production delivery.
- Deep hands-on knowledge of at least one blockchain: its execution model, transaction lifecycle, state, finality, and failure behavior.
- Strong software engineering skills and experience building backend or distributed systems.
- The ability to read unfamiliar code and specifications, form a testable hypothesis, and design an experiment that can disprove it.
- Experience designing reproducible performance benchmarks and using profiling to distinguish CPU, memory, storage, and network bottlenecks.
- Evidence of careful reasoning about correctness and security, especially where mistakes affect funds or chain state.
- Product judgment: explain who needs a capability, what it improves, and whether the result warrants further investment.
- Clear collaboration and documentation so another team can operate or extend what you build.
Helpful Experience
- Contributions to blockchain clients, protocol implementations, or open-source infrastructure.
- Rust, Go, C++, or other systems programming languages; smart-contract development where relevant.
- EVM implementation, CPU microarchitecture, compiler optimization, or hardware performance counters.
- RPC performance, transaction submission, simulation, indexing, or cross-chain infrastructure.
- Early-stage products where you helped decide what to build and what to stop.
What Success Looks Like
Within six months
- You have completed a scoped experiment and documented a decision to continue, redirect, or stop it, citing the results.
- For a bet that proceeds, you have validated a developer or infrastructure use case, delivered a production pilot with correctness checks and a rollback plan, and taken responsibility for its production support.
Benefits & Perks
🏥 Private Health Insurance 💪 Gym Reimbursement 🚅 Commuter Benefits 🌴 Flexible Time Off 🥙 In-Office Group Meals 🧠 Learning & Development Stipend 🌎 Company Sponsored Conferences & Events 🎧 Books & Audiobook subscription with Bookster
Sourced from the a16z Speedrun talent network — apply on Speedrun.