Senior Backend Engineer
About Project Eleven
Project Eleven is an applied lab of builders and technologists working at the intersection of quantum computing and cryptography. We build impactful solutions that push the digital-asset ecosystem to a more secure future. Our focus is post-quantum migration: upgrading wallets, identity, and settlement rails to quantum-safe primitives without breaking UX, composability, and developer workflows.
Our mission is to future-proof digital assets and preserve self-sovereignty in a post-quantum world. We do that by building the canonical tooling and products teams can adopt: crypto-agile infrastructure, reference implementations, and integrations that fit real constraints like latency, cost, compatibility, key rotation, and recovery.
We work with leading ecosystems to make this migration real through products we build, audits, testnets, and cutting edge research. The vision we are have is clear: a proven upgrade path, production-ready tooling and users retaining control of their assets and identity, before CRQC exists.
The role
We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our growing Product Engineering team. You'll play a pivotal role in building the canonical infrastructure that protects institutional digital-asset operations in a post-quantum world.
This role is a full-time, fully remote position in Europe (GMT to GMT+2).
What you'll be responsible for
Owning and evolving security-critical backend services at the core of our institutional product
Designing and implementing systems with strict correctness, durability, and auditability guarantees
Enforcing strict security boundaries around sensitive operations and data
Defining and upholding API stability, versioning, and backward-compatibility policies
Contributing to internal security standards, threat modeling, and engineering best practices
Partnering with our cryptography and research engineers to bring novel primitives into production systems
What you bring
Strong proficiency in Rust and TypeScript (ideally both)
Experience building performant backend services, APIs, and libraries at production scale
Experience designing systems with strong security, durability, or correctness requirements e.g. financial systems, key management, identity, custody, or other regulated infrastructure
Solid applied cryptography fundamentals: signing, encryption, secrets management, key handling
Good knowledge of CI/CD, service deployments, and containerisation
High competency with automated testing (unit, integration, and e2e)
Strong English communication
What we'd love to see
Experience building or operating institutional infrastructure: custody platforms, HSM-backed systems, KMS, or similar high-assurance systems
Familiarity with threshold signing, MPC, or HSM integration patterns
Exposure to compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001) and audit-friendly system design
Experience with post-quantum cryptography or the operational implications of migrating cryptographic primitives
Experience developing and maintaining long-lived libraries or protocols with strong backward-compatibility requirements
Open-source contributions to cryptography, security, or related infrastructure
Equal Opportunity
We are committed to equal employment opportunity and believe that diverse teams build better products. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to any protected characteristic under applicable law.