Protocol Support - General Application

Protocol Support

The Ethereum Foundation’s (EF) Protocol Support (PS) team helps ensure Ethereum has the right people, processes, and perspectives to support its long-term stewardship. Broadly, the team helps facilitate network upgrades, attract and retain protocol contributors, and undertakes various other projects related to the sustainable evolution of Ethereum.

PS team members collaborate closely with others inside and outside the EF on initiatives like AllCoreDevs, the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship, Summer of Protocols, Protocol Guild, and many other initiatives, both big and small. We’re now looking for one more person to join the team and help across these projects!

Role Description

The objective for this role is to increase the PS team’s bandwidth on the initiatives listed above, and potentially kickstart new ones. Short term, there are many important-but-not-urgent projects for you to take on. Here are several examples. Your work will span multiple domains and lead you down different rabbit holes. You’ll be exposed to the trickiest problems the team is thinking through and, over time, either gravitate towards a specific niche or become a high-context generalist.

Here are a few key questions central to our work:

- What should the “protocol contributor pipeline” look like, and what role should the EF (and PS specifically) play in it?

- What incentives exist around core development and how should we build resiliency to ensure Ethereum is well-supported long-term?

- What should Ethereum’s long-term governance structure be? Is our current default trajectory a good one? How should L1 maintainers interface with the broader community, and L1-adjacent teams?

Given Ethereum’s nature, the Protocol Support team can’t unilaterally answer these questions. The vast majority of our work happens in the open, in collaboration with different parts of the Ethereum community. This is an unusual role, which can be approached in many different ways. There’s a lot of room to shape the specifics around your strong suits!

Unique aspects of our work environment include:

- Working in public, with external stakeholders & collaborators: by default, the public thing is the main thing. You should expect the bulk of your contributions to happen in that setting. This means you’ll need to collaborate (and often compromise!) with people outside the team/org over which you have little to no “control”.

- Loose guidance & high agency: while the team does coordinate internally (via a single weekly call — no daily standups!), and individuals are always available to help, the responsibility to run with things is yours and no one else’s. You shouldn’t expect a career ladder with clear levels, but to be the architect of your own role over time.

- Wide design space & deliberate, high-leverage actions: the EF is in the privileged position where it only needs to consider what is best for Ethereum, with minimal other constraints. This creates a wide design space when thinking about potential solutions to problems. The flip side is that the EF is only a single actor in the Ethereum ecosystem and must be thoughtful about choosing what to allocate resources to, and the second-order impacts of doing so.

This isn’t a fit for everyone, but for the right people, it’s an extremely stimulating and empowering environment. A word we often to describe good fits here is “activated”!

Requirements

This is a unique role and there are many ways to do it. While there isn’t a specific background or “type” we are looking for, you’ll need the following to succeed:

- General Ethereum protocol knowledge. We don’t expect you to have hands-on protocol implementation experience, but you should have a broad understanding of how Ethereum works. Network upgrades are at the core of everything we do and familiarity with both the technical and governance side of them is critical. It’s okay to not know everything, but you should be comfortable enough to know “how to learn” when new things come up.

- Autonomy & tolerance of ambiguity. Many of the things we work on are new, underspecified, and sometimes a bit weird. The team has a remote, async-heavy structure where people are expected to drive their own work. You should feel comfortable being the person who has to “go figure something out” and reporting back when you think you’ve reached the next critical step.

- Technical literacy & curiosity. While we don’t expect you to be a professional-level software engineer, you should have some degree of technical literacy. When encountering a new technical concept, your instinct should be to seek a rough understanding of it rather than treating it as a "black box."

- Ambitious goals & humble practicality. The PS team is small but makes a significant impact by focusing on high-leverage tasks. This often means handling all the details, both big and small. You'll be expected to contribute to setting the Big Vision™️ while also rolling up your sleeves to tackle the grunt work when needed.

• This is a full-time role. While the role is fully remote with a flexible schedule, you must be available daily for a few hours around “Eth o’clock” (14:00 UTC) for synchronous calls.
• Additionally, while this isn’t a strict requirement, you’ll benefit from being able to travel a few times a year to events related to your work, such as Devcon, interop, or other workshops.
• Lastly, for anons: you are free to apply and work under a pseudonymous name but will need to KYC with the Ethereum Foundation for onboarding and payment.