Senior Rust Engineer (f/m/d)

Who we are

Phoenix R&D is a young company, but we are not new to the game. We as individuals have been active in the area of secure messaging in both industry and academia for over 10 years.

We work in close cooperation with academia to provide state-of-the-art messaging technology that is designed to be efficient, practical, private, and secure.

Phoenix R&D is a remote-first company headquartered in Berlin, where we regularly meet and where we are embedded in a community of cryptographers, open-source software enthusiasts, information security professionals, journalists, and activists.

What we do

Our goal is to define and build an open technological foundation for the next generation of privacy-preserving messaging applications.

The emerging Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol is at the core of our research and development around secure messaging. We are founding members of the IETF MLS working group, where we collaborate with like-minded parties from academia and industry to develop the MLS specification. Alongside our work on the specification, we also started OpenMLS an open-source Rust implementation of the specification and maintain it along with our friends at Cryspen.

Based on MLS, we are working on a technology stack that allows building modern messaging applications for a range of target groups. To reach and empower as many developers and users as possible, all the technology we develop is open-source with a focus on thorough documentation and user-friendliness. Our explicit goal is to develop a community of contributors and users that helps us build the next generation of private and secure messaging.

What we are about

We are driven by the belief that technology should serve a meaningful purpose, be fun to use, safe and secure, and free and accessible to people. We favor shared, analyzed standards over home-brewed solutions, open protocols over silos controlled by a small number of entities, and open-source software over proprietary code.

We strive to cultivate an environment of respect and open communication that allows everyone involved to feel safe and to speak their mind, both of which is especially important when working primarily remotely.

We believe that diversity is an asset and aim to build a team of people from different backgrounds. In particular, we encourage people from groups that are typically underrepresented in the technology space to apply.

We recognize that to achieve excellence in what we do, we need room to grow both personally and professionally. Our goal is to create an environment of collaboration and sharing of expertise and experience, but also of self-dependent work.

Tasks

We are looking for a senior Rust engineer to help us build a core library, tools, and infrastructure for the next generation of private & secure messaging.

At Phoenix R&D, we are in the late stages of architectural design and are looking to start building our product. Your job will be to help us lift our existing PoC implementation to production readiness.

At this stage, we are a small team. This means that on the one hand, you will be required to work on your own, take responsibility for individual projects, and present your results. On the other hand, you will review the work of others and guide your teammates with your expertise. Both of these points require excellent communication skills and the ability to work well in a team.

Requirements

• You have extensive experience with Rust
• You like working with network stacks, databases, and state machines
• You are familiar with setting up and maintaining CI/CD systems
• You are strongly motivated to learn about new technologies and environments
• Optional: You have previous experience with mobile development
• No expertise in security/privacy is required, but you are curious and willing to expand your knowledge in this area
• You work well in a remote-first team and have excellent communication skills
• You live in a place that is compatible with European working hours (CET/CEST +- 2 hours)

Benefits

• Remote work on a flexible schedule
• Salary range 80k- 110k
• Annual profit-sharing bonus
• 25 days of paid leave per year
• Work equipment
• Opportunity to shape our technology choices
• Work in a highly relevant and dynamic field