Senior Distributed Systems Engineer

This is a remote position with in-person onboarding and retreats a few times a year.

About Vana

Vana is the leading decentralized AI network powered by user-owned data. Data is the most valuable resource in the digital world and it has been furthered by AI. Vana taps into the power of every individual to contribute data to leading AI models. Our guiding use case is a user-owned AI foundation model, collectively owned by 100 million users who've all contributed their data to it.

Projects like theReddit data DAO that onboarded 140k users are built on Vana. By building an open ecosystem to break down the walled gardens of tech giants, we are accelerating AI progress and giving users ownership in the AI models they create.

We got started out of MIT and have raised $20M from leading VCs including Paradigm and Polychain.

Role Overview

We’re looking for a Distributed Systems Engineer to help design and build the scalable infrastructure powering data access and compute in the Vana network.

You’ll be designing and building systems that allow users to connect their data in a privacy-preserving way, as well as pool and monetize it. As the backbone of Vana’s decentralized data layer, these systems move encrypted data across nodes, verify permissions through cryptographic proofs, and support ML workflows such as AI training and fine-tuning. They leverage Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to ensure that no entity can ever access raw user data.

Here are some of the teams and projects that are already building on our infrastructure:

• An EV startup collects video data of edge cases like near-collision events to train better driving models

• A robotics-startup wants to fine-tune a model for grasping irregular objects

• A fintech works on improving the correctness of their risk-modeling by analyzing transaction records in a GDPR-compliant way

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development of data query and compute layer with the goal of scaling it to process data required to train AI models applied to use-cases in EV, robotics, finances, healthcare and more

• Design critical protocol mechanisms related to data privacy, permissioning and provenance applying recent cryptography techniques like ZK proofs, MCP, TEEs

• Contribute to the development of Vana - EVM-compatible L1 blockchain specifically designed for user-owned data transactions

• Develop comprehensive documentation and contribute to whitepapers, including collaborations with outside researchers and engineers from MIT and top AI labs/startups

• Develop and implement robust debugging and troubleshooting processes for quick resolution of node-related issues in production environments

• Participate in code reviews and provide technical guidance to team members

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience in building large scale, secure, multi-node distributed systems

• Experience designing pipelines for processing large amounts of data, ideally leveraging distributed data storage

• Experience in Python, Go or similar languages in mission-critical systems

• Experience profiling, debugging, and optimizing distributed systems for scale and performance

• Some infrastructure experience with any of the top cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure)

• Experience in a fast-paced, async-first, globally distributed startup environment with rapid prototyping and iterative development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in the compute-over-data space including sandboxed execution, data locality etc

• Experience with ML workflows (cleaning data, training and fine-tuning models)

• Experience with privacy preserving computation (TEEs, MPC, ZKP)

• Experience or interest in decentralization technologies and web3 (protocol design, smart contracts development)

• Track-record of significantly contributing to OSS

What We Offer

We are building a foundational piece of the user-owned internet and would love for you to be a part of our team. We are a diverse group of driven, smart, and ambitious individuals, constantly challenging each other to grow, learn and iterate faster. We are experts across our fields and experienced entrepreneurs looking to scale our success in something deeply mission-driven.

At Vana, we are big on collaboration and supporting each other to learn, grow, and excel in our individual pursuits. In addition to joining the Vana family, the successful candidate will receive:

• A competitive salary with equity options.

• A comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and vision insurance.

• A flexible work schedule.

• Unlimited PTO.