Technical Grants Lead Full Time

The Web3 Foundation nurtures and stewards technologies and applications for the decentralized web. We collaborate with cutting-edge developer teams, researchers and community leaders to strengthen and extend the uses of decentralized technologies; building the future of identity, privacy, financial markets, commerce, and more.

Our core project at the moment is Polkadot, a protocol designed to connect blockchains and allow them to interoperate, share security and more. In addition, we are supporting the development of a number of technologies that form the Web 3.0 tech stack – such as decentralized messaging, distributed storage and secret management.

About the Role & Web3 Foundation Grants Program

The Web3 Foundation’s grants program is searching for a Team Lead.

The Web3 Foundation is committed to distributing a significant amount of funding for the development of open-source software that will contribute to the creation of the Web3 technologies stack. Once we have selected the projects to fund, we ensure they make progress on their milestones so that their software is developed according to their roadmap and can be used by the wider community.

The purpose of this role is to lead the grants team in determining the viability of grant applications as well as deliverables from grantees. This involves quickly understanding different technology stacks, the underlying requirements of the software, and performing functional testing to determine if the requirements have been met. Depending on the project, it may also involve review and inspection of codebases in a variety of languages and frameworks, such as Rust, and JavaScript. You will gain an understanding of Polkadot, Substrate and other related blockchain technologies. Please see grants.web3.foundation for more background on the process in which you will be contributing to.

We are a lean team with a flat organization. Our Head Quarters are in Zug, Switzerland. We are open to receive applications from remote (EU) based candidates.

Responsibilities 

• Contribute to the overall management and improvement of the grants program
• Lead a small technical team of Grants Evaluators
• Make decisions on grant giving together with the Grants Committee
• Evaluate grant milestone delivery, including reviewing documentation, compiling their projects, and functional testing of these projects
• Support in liaising with applying teams,  in order to understand their project and evaluate their technical abilities
• Liaise with relevant teams (e.g., legal, finance, collaborations, community building) at agreed points of the application process

Requirements 

• Previous experience in a Team Lead Role or similar in a fast-paced environment
• Solid programming experience, ideally in Rust and/or Javascript, Go, C++
• Knowledge and understanding of blockchain technologies and applications
• Technical ability to evaluate software implementation: setting up environments; compiling complex projects and their dependencies; reviewing and analyzing code
• Technical ability to test software: reading, writing and evaluating test plans; running and evaluating automated test suites; reviewing and testing functionality
• Approachable personality, drive and exceptional communication skills in English
• Demonstrated ability to manage and juggle multiple relationships with internal and external stakeholders

A plus 

• Experience with systematic evaluation of technology projects
• Experience with Substrate and proficiency in Docker
• Experience with Linux, and other Unix-based OS’s

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and employee benefits
• Regular company retreats at unique locations located around Europe
• Opportunity to work in a multinational, high-performance  team with diverse backgrounds (i.e. physics, computer science, machine-learning algorithm design, legal, financial products, management consulting, marketing & advertising, etc.)

To apply to this position, we ask you to answer a few questions in the application form, and to submit your CV and a cover letter, telling us a bit about yourself and your motivation to join us.

For more information about us, visit us on

• Web3 Foundation website: https://web3.foundation/ 
• Polkadot website: https://polkadot.network/
• Documentation: https://wiki.polkadot.network/