Stay in the loop.
Follow @raikucom on Twitter for product updates, engineering deep dives, and a closer look at how we’re building the future of blockspace.
Location: Remote (Europe-friendly time zones preferred)
Type: Full-Time
Compensation: Competitive Salary + Token Allocation
About Raiku
Raiku is reengineering blockchain infrastructure from first principles to make global digital markets as precise and dependable as physical systems. Built on Solana, our platform delivers deterministic execution, guaranteed inclusion, and low-latency performance—solving the foundational failures that cause transactions to miss, trades to revert, and systems to collapse under pressure. By placing high-performance compute close to where transactions happen and coordinating execution through our advanced scheduling engine, Raiku empowers developers to build scalable, high-performance applications—and gives institutions the reliability and control they demand. We believe financial infrastructure should behave like physics: fast, reliable, and predictable—every time, without exception.
About the Role
As a Protocol Research Engineer at Raiku, you'll dive deep into Solana's consensus mechanisms, validator dynamics, and block-building edge cases to help push the boundaries of what’s possible on-chain. Your work will directly inform and evolve Raiku's infrastructure — including ahead-of-time auctions, deterministic inclusion, and decentralized execution environments.
This role is ideal for an engineer who obsesses over protocol-level behavior, from slashing conditions and fork choice rules to novel token incentive structures and inclusion guarantees. You will collaborate closely with our core engineering team, lead technical research deep-dives, and shape future SIMD proposals and Raiku-native designs.
Core Responsibilities
Protocol Research & Development
Analyze Solana protocol changes (SIMDs) and model their impact on consensus, block production, and validator incentives.
Explore alternative leader schedules, transaction scheduling policies, and failure recovery mechanisms.
Design and prototype changes to Raiku's validator sidecar, ackermann-node, and execution environment logic.
Incentives & Economics
Simulate and reason about token-level economics (e.g. fee markets, slot auctions, stake redistribution) in the context of Raiku’s architecture.
Collaborate with the team on reward structures that align validators, apps, and execution primitives.
Contribute to internal tooling for simulating validator behavior under new fee models or coordination layers.
Research & Thought Leadership
Write internal memos and public-facing research exploring protocol edge cases, inclusion determinism, and priority fee market design.
Lead technical discussions and workshops across the team and ecosystem partners.
Represent Raiku in upstream governance and protocol forums (e.g., GitHub SIMDs, community calls).
What We’re Looking For
Deep understanding of Solana's architecture, consensus algorithm (Tower BFT), and validator mechanics.
Proficiency in systems programming (Rust or C++) and experience working with validator or node clients (Agave, Jito, etc.).
Comfort reasoning about distributed systems, forks, slashing, transaction lifecycle, and fee markets.
Demonstrated ability to write clear, technical research — either internal design docs or public content.
A rigorous, systems-level thinker who thrives in ambiguity and wants to help shape the frontier of internet-scale consensus.
Bonus Points
Experience contributing to SIMD proposals or L1 protocol development (Solana, Cosmos, Ethereum, etc.).
Familiarity with execution environments (SVM, EVM, Move) or decentralized scheduling infrastructure.
Interest in MEV mitigation, slot auctions, or validator tokenomics.
Past experience in distributed systems research, zero-knowledge design, or compiler/runtime engineering.
Why Join Raiku?
Raiku is building a high-performance execution layer atop Solana that enables guaranteed transaction inclusion, pre-confirmations, and slot-level coordination — unlocking a new design space for ultra-reliable onchain apps. We’re backed by leading investors, deeply technical, and shipping fast.
Work with a world-class engineering team building core infrastructure from first principles.
Help define the next evolution of block production and validator coordination on Solana.
Remote-first, async culture optimized for focus, ownership, and velocity.
Competitive salary + meaningful token upside.
Home office and workstation setup stipend.
