Protocol Director

What You’ll Do

• Lead the protocol teams
• Manage the leads of the validators, Solana, and Chainlink teams. Develop them as technical leaders and hold the bar for the engineers beneath them.
• Provide protocol-level technical guidance to the teams, not just escalation management but genuine depth that helps them work through hard problems faster.
• Set a consistent operating rhythm across the three teams: planning, reviews, incident response, and continuous improvement.
• Own headcount health, retention and performance within your scope. Raise issues early and don't let team problems compound.
• Own protocol strategy
• Develop and maintain a forward-looking view across the protocols the business participates in. Understand where each protocol is heading technically, what that means for our infrastructure and services and how it maps to business opportunity.
• Be the connective tissue between protocol evolution (upgrades, forks, new mechanisms) and the engineering teams that have to respond to it.
• Advise the Head of Blockchain Engineering and broader leadership on protocol-level risk, opportunity, and emerging areas worth pursuing.
• Identify where emerging protocol developments represent material opportunities or threats for the business. Examples would be new L1s, staking mechanisms, oracle integrations, cross-chain primitives etc.
• Operate the function
• Hold the operational picture across the three teams: who is on what, what is at risk, what is blocked, what is shipping.
• Make staffing and sequencing calls within your scope. Work with the Head of Blockchain Engineering and hiring to plan ahead.
• Run the cadences and rituals that keep the function coherent without adding bureaucratic overhead.
• Coordinate across DIS, client-facing teams, and engagement leads to ensure the protocol function is pointed at the highest-leverage work.
• Support client and commercial work
• Step into client conversations where protocol expertise at leadership level is needed, supplying technical depth, not just seniority.
• Represent the protocol function in commercial discussions, scoping conversations and delivery reviews when protocol capability is at the core of what's being sold or delivered.
• Translate protocol complexity into clarity for non-technical stakeholders internally and externally.

What We’re Looking For

• Demonstrated protocol depth across at least two of: Ethereum (validator/consensus layer), Solana, or Chainlink/oracle networks. You should be able to hold technical ground with senior engineers on these stacks.
• A track record managing technical teams, not just senior ICs but building and developing teams, holding people accountable, and navigating the harder parts of people leadership.
• Experience operating in a fast-moving, high-stakes environment where protocol decisions have real business and client consequences.
• Strong technical communication so you can take a protocol problem and explain it clearly to engineers, to clients, and to executives, adjusting for each.
• Operational fluency where you've run the logistics of a multi-team function: capacity planning, sequencing, on-call, incident response, hiring. You can hold the whole picture and keep it moving.
• High agency, low ego. You'll own a clear mandate and are expected to drive within it.
• A genuine interest in where the protocol landscape is heading, not just maintaining what we run today, but positioning for what comes next.

Bonus Points

• Hands-on experience running or building validator or RPC infrastructure at institutional scale.
• Familiarity with Chainlink CCIP, Data Feeds, or Functions. Understanding of the oracle layer as infrastructure, not just integration.
• Experience with Solana's runtime, validator client architecture (Agave/Firedancer), or ecosystem tooling.
• Background working alongside tier-1 financial institutions (banks, asset managers, custodians) as an engineering or protocol counterpart.
• Exposure to staking economics, protocol governance, or technical due diligence on new chains.
• Experience building or scaling a protocol engineering function from an early or mid-stage foundation.