Performance Engineering Lead

Summary

Join the Ethereum Foundation's Protocol team as a Performance Engineering Lead and drive the scalability and robustness of Ethereum. You will ensure Ethereum meets global usage demands by collaborating with internal and external teams. Responsibilities include establishing performance monitoring, profiling, and optimization; identifying and resolving performance issues; analyzing and improving node snapshots and restores; developing tools and benchmarks; collaborating with client teams and researchers; guiding strategic decisions; and surveying performance bottlenecks. This role requires 5+ years of experience in performance engineering and distributed systems, demonstrated experience profiling distributed systems, strong hands-on experience operating clusters of distributed nodes, familiarity with Ethereum node infrastructure, and exceptional communication skills. Bonus experience includes managing Ethereum node clusters, expertise in performance profiling of blockchain infrastructure, and collaboration with DevOps teams. The position is full-time, fully remote, with flexible hours.

Requirements

• 5+ years experience in performance engineering, distributed systems, or infrastructure roles, ideally with direct responsibility for large-scale production deployments
• Demonstrated experience profiling distributed systems, systematically identifying bottlenecks, and delivering clear, measurable performance improvements
• Strong hands-on experience operating clusters of distributed nodes or services, particularly in production scenarios with high user traffic. Ideally with experience in Kubernetes, Nomad or a large scale orchestration platform
• Familiarity with Ethereum node infrastructure or equivalent distributed systems, and a deep understanding of their performance characteristics
• Exceptional collaborative and communication skills, with proven ability to work cross-functionally and align diverse stakeholders on performance-driven outcomes

Responsibilities

• Establish a comprehensive approach to performance monitoring, profiling, and optimization specifically tailored for large-scale production deployments of Ethereum nodes, such as RPC services
• Work closely with EthPandaOps and external ecosystem stakeholders to identify, analyze, and resolve performance issues at scale
• Analyze and improve industry standard approaches used for node snapshots and quick restores used by large scale deployments of Ethereum nodes
• Develop and refine tools, benchmarks, and best practices to ensure optimal performance of Ethereum across diverse, real world distributed deployments
• Collaborate with Ethereum client teams and researchers to translate performance insights into actionable improvements for Ethereum clients and core infrastructure
• Guide strategic decisions through rigorous data-driven analysis and clearly communicating bottlenecks and proposed solutions to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Comprehensively surveying various performance bottlenecks affecting Ethereum scalability, including state, data, execution, and node performance, and identifying candidate solutions to systematically address each one

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience managing clusters of Ethereum nodes (e.g., RPC endpoints, validator nodes, indexing services) under high-volume conditions
• Proven expertise in performance profiling and optimization of blockchain infrastructure or similar highly complex distributed systems
• Experience collaborating closely with DevOps teams to streamline deployments and establish robust, continuous performance monitoring systems

Benefits

• This is a full-time role, fully remote
• Hours are flexible, but you should generally be available around “Eth o’clock” (14:00 UTC) for synchronous calls