Backend Engineer - Protocol Platform

About the role

We are looking for a Backend Engineer to build the services, APIs, data systems, and integrations that power Compound’s application layer and operational infrastructure.

You will work at the boundary between decentralized protocols and traditional software systems turning blockchain data into easy to use product experiences, enabling integrations with wallets and financial partners, and building secure infrastructure for teams and users operating in a high-stakes financial environment.

This role is ideal for an engineer with strong distributed-systems fundamentals who wants meaningful ownership over production systems at the intersection of DeFi, financial infrastructure, and developer platforms.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and operate scalable, secure backend services and APIs that make Compound’s protocol easier to use, integrate with, observe, and operate across applications, internal tooling, and partner integrations.
• Build reliable systems for indexing, processing, reconciling, and serving on-chain data across EVM and, where relevant, non-EVM networks.
• Design for blockchain-specific failure modes, including chain reorganizations, confirmation and finality assumptions, delayed indexing, failed transactions, RPC inconsistencies, incomplete third-party data, retries, replay handling, and idempotency.
• Partner closely with protocol engineers to define and maintain robust contract interfaces, transaction workflows, event schemas, configuration-change processes, and release procedures between on-chain contracts and offchain services.
• Develop backend services, APIs, and data models for account positions, portfolio views, transaction history, protocol analytics, risk monitoring, notifications, and operational reporting.
• Own integrations with external infrastructure and financial partners required by Compound’s product roadmap, including wallet infrastructure, custodians, RPC providers, indexers, data platforms, and identity or access providers where relevant.
• Build secure service-to-service architecture, authentication and authorization systems, secrets management, audit logging, and access-control controls appropriate for financial infrastructure.
• Improve system reliability through observability, monitoring, alerting, incident response procedures, and thoughtful operational tooling.
• Participate in architecture reviews, code reviews, and technical planning; help establish a high bar for engineering quality, documentation, testing, and security.
• Collaborate with protocol engineering, product, design, risk, and operations teams to turn complex workflows into reliable, intuitive user and partner experiences.
• Build the offchain technical foundations that enable Compound to scale across new products, integrations, markets, and institutional use cases while preserving clear boundaries between protocol logic and application-layer services.
• Own backend readiness for protocol upgrades, including interface changes, event and data migrations, historical backfills, reconciliation, monitoring, and coordinated rollout plans.

What success looks like

• Core application and data services are reliable, performant, secure, and easy for internal teams, external developers, and partners to integrate with.
• Offchain systems process and reconcile on-chain data accurately, consistently, and transparently, with robust handling for chain reorganizations, confirmations and finality, failed transactions, delayed indexing, RPC inconsistencies, and incomplete third-party data.
• Protocol upgrades have safe, coordinated backend readiness, including versioned interfaces, event and data migrations, historical backfills, reconciliation, monitoring, and rollout plans.
• Offchain services improve usability, integrations, and operations without becoming hidden dependencies for core protocol safety, solvency, or direct interaction with Compound’s smart contracts.
• Critical integrations with wallets, custodians, infrastructure providers, identity or access providers, and other ecosystem partners are secure, well-documented, and operationally resilient.
• Engineering teams have clear end-to-end visibility into protocol-connected services, transaction workflows, data freshness, user journeys, and critical partner integrations.
• You identify and address reliability, security, data-correctness, and scalability risks before they become material production incidents.
• You become a trusted technical partner across protocol engineering, product, risk, and infrastructure.

Requirements

• 4+ years of professional backend software engineering experience building production services, APIs, data systems, developer platforms, or financial infrastructure.
• Strong experience in one or more modern backend languages (ie Go, Python, TypeScript, Rust).
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, API design, asynchronous processing, event-driven architecture, databases, caching, queues, data consistency, and service reliability.
• Experience designing and operating cloud-based production systems, including containerized services, managed databases, networking, observability, and deployment pipelines.
• Strong security mindset, including authentication, authorization, secrets handling, least-privilege access controls, audit logging, and secure third-party integrations.
• Demonstrated ability to own projects from system design through production deployment, monitoring, incident response, and iterative improvement.
• Excellent engineering judgment, written communication, and ability to work effectively across technical and non-technical teams.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment with high ownership, evolving requirements, and ambitious technical goals.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively leverage AI-assisted development tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar) to accelerate software development, debugging, testing, documentation, and code reviews while maintaining high standards for code quality, security, and engineering judgment.

Qualifications

• Experience building backend systems for DeFi protocols, fintech platforms, exchanges, custodians, wallets, payment infrastructure, or other financial services.
• Working knowledge of EVM transaction flows, RPC providers, event logs, contract reads, ABI-based integrations, and the practical implications of confirmations, finality, and chain reorganizations.
• Familiarity with blockchain data and infrastructure providers such as Alchemy, Infura, QuickNode, The Graph, Goldsky, Subsquid, Dune, or equivalent tools.
• Experience building or operating globally distributed backend services, including API gateways, RPC proxies, caching layers, edge infrastructure, and authentication.
• Familiarity with Solidity and smart-contract architecture sufficient to collaborate effectively with protocol engineers and reason about contract interfaces, state transitions, emitted events, and upgrade-related changes.
• Experience with custody or permissioned-access systems.
• Experience supporting external developers and partners through APIs, SDKs, webhooks, documentation, developer tooling, or partner-facing integration workflows.
• An active interest in crypto, DeFi, financial markets, or open financial infrastructure.