Founding Protocol Engineer - Dragonfly Portfolio

Dragonfly is a crypto-native Venture Capital and research firm with $2B+ in assets under management and 160+ portfolio companies (see list). Our Talent team works to support the recruiting efforts of the companies within our portfolio by connecting them with talented potential candidates.

One of our portfolio companies is hiring a Founding Protocol Engineer to lead smart contract development and incentive design for a high-scale consumer crypto protocol already live with strong usage.

This is not a listing for an internal role at Dragonfly. If you’re a match, we’ll reach out to talk with you about this role, and may introduce you to other relevant opportunities across our portfolio as well.

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years as a solidity engineer
• 5+ years as a software engineer
• Experience building protocols at scale ($10M+ TVL or 10k+ users)
• Experience working at a startup
  
  

About The Role

You’ll lead protocol development for a consumer-focused crypto project with real traction and ambitious scale. Your work will include:

• Designing and implementing smart contracts from scratch, not just iterating on existing DeFi primitives
• Co-leading fee and incentive design, including tokenomics and dynamic pricing curves
• Researching and developing new mechanisms around randomness, composability, and scalability
• Owning key integrations with cross-chain infrastructure and third-party protocols
• Working directly with the founding team (including protocol and consumer product veterans) to define technical strategy and roadmap
  
  

Other Roles We’re Hiring For

If this isn’t the right fit, we’re also hiring engineers across the Dragonfly portfolio—particularly those focused on protocol development, L1/L2 infra, MEV, ZK, and developer tooling. Many of these roles are early technical hires with ownership from day one.

Process

• We’ll confidentially match you with relevant portfolio companies.
• If mutual interest exists, we’ll facilitate a warm introduction.
• If there isn’t an immediate match, we’ll keep you in mind for future roles.
  
  

Our portfolio companies are globally distributed, hiring for remote, hybrid, and in-person roles worldwide. They’re building across the entire crypto ecosystem—including DeFi, CeFi, infrastructure, L1s and L2s, creator/consumer applications, NFTs, ZK, and more. All candidate submissions are strictly confidential.

Submit your information below, and we’ll be in touch if there’s a potential fit.