Protocol Lead
Pluralis Research is pioneering Protocol Learning—a fully decentralised way to train and deploy AI models that opens this layer to individuals rather than well resourced corporates. By pooling compute from many participants, incentivising their efforts, and preventing any single party from controlling a model’s full weights, we’re creating a genuinely open, collaborative path to frontier-scale AI. If you want your work to shape the future of truly open innovation in artificial intelligence, join us.
Protocol Lead
We are recruiting a Protocol Lead who lives and breathes crypto, has a proven track record of building decentralised systems, and wants to shape the next era of protocol design.
Key Responsibilities
Protocol Architecture: Own the systems side end-to-end design of Pluralis’s Protocol Learning paradigm, from work verification to tokenomics and network incentives.
Technical Leadership: Lead a team of distributed systems engineers, guiding architecture decisions and best practices for high-performance, secure, and scalable solutions.
R&D & Implementation: Translate cutting-edge research into production. Evaluate and initialise partnerships, develop novel primitives (for example; verification via exploiting byzantine robust optimisers the AI team may develop for training) and scaling approaches that make the Pluralis protocol the default destination for open training.
Ecosystem Building: Collaborate with open-source communities, partner projects, and external stakeholders. Drive protocol governance discussions, propose and implement protocol upgrades, and foster a developer ecosystem around Pluralis.
Mentorship & Recruitment: Attract, hire, and mentor top crypto-native engineering talent. Build and nurture a team capable of delivering resilient, decentralised infrastructure at scale.
Strategic Input: Work closely with the founder, advisor and investors to align protocol development with overall business strategy and product goals.
What We’re Looking For
Deep Crypto Expertise: Previous experience architecting or contributing to a major blockchain or Layer-2 protocol, or leading critical components of a decentralised project.
Distributed Systems Mastery: Hands-on knowledge of P2P networking, cryptography, distributed data pipelines and training regimes. Deep ML knowledge is a bonus but not a requirement.
Leadership Experience: Proven ability to lead technical teams, set direction, and deliver results under startup-paced conditions.
Open-Source Ideologue: Ideologically committed to frontier open model releases.
Compensation & Benefits
Equity-Heavy Package: The right candidate will receive a meaningful equity stake or token allocation.
Competitive Base: Pluralis is hiring the best.
Visa Sponsorship: Optional full visa sponsorship and relocation support to either US or Australia.
Remote-First Culture: Flexible work environment with team members distributed globally. We have two hubs; New York and Melbourne with optional hybrid work if desired.
Cutting-Edge Domain: Work at the intersection of AI and decentralised systems, tackling some of the most challenging engineering problems in what is about to be one of the largest intersections of two previously non-overlapping fields ever.
Backed by Union Square Ventures and other tier-1 investors, we’re a world-class, deeply technical team of ML researchers. Pluralis is unapologetically ideological. We view the world as a better place if we are able to implement what we are attempting, and Protocol Learning as the only plausible approach to preventing a handful of massive corporations monopolising model development, access and release, and achieving massive economic capture. If this resonates, please apply.
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At Pluralis Research, we're on a mission to revolutionize the realm of artificial intelligence with our pioneering Protocol Learning approach. We’re seeking a Protocol Lead who isn’t just familiar with crypto, but truly lives and breathes it! If you have a solid track record of crafting decentralized systems and are excited about shaping the future of protocol design, this is your chance. As Protocol Lead, you will be at the forefront of our innovative journey, taking full ownership of the end-to-end design of our Protocol Learning systems. Your expert leadership will guide a talented team of distributed systems engineers, ensuring the creation of high-performance, secure, and scalable solutions. You will also translate cutting-edge research into real-world applications, initiating partnerships and developing novel solutions to position Pluralis as the go-to for open training protocols. Collaboration is key, as you’ll engage with open-source communities and lead protocol governance discussions. We want someone who can mentor and attract top-tier crypto talent, while also aligning protocol development with our overarching business strategies. If you are passionate about open model releases and have demonstrated deep expertise in crypto and distributed systems, we want to hear from you. Join Pluralis Research, where your work can help create a more equitable future in AI.
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