Platform Architect
Blockstream8 months ago
Responsibilities
- Own the architecture and technical vision for Blockstream’s platform and shared services.
- Design scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant distributed systems supporting Bitcoin, Layer-2, and enterprise products.
- Define platform standards for APIs, data models, service boundaries, and infrastructure patterns.
- Guide engineering teams through implementation, design reviews, and complex technical challenges.
- Partner with Security and Infrastructure teams on defense-in-depth, key management, and operational resilience.
- Evaluate and introduce technologies while balancing innovation with operational maturity.
- Ensure platform designs meet regulatory, enterprise, and institutional requirements while preserving decentralization principles.
- Document architectural decisions, tradeoffs, and long-term technical roadmaps.
- Mentor senior engineers and raise architectural rigor across teams.
Requirements
- At least 5 years of experience designing and operating large-scale platforms or infrastructure systems.
- 6–8 years of development experience building production-grade backend systems and designing secure APIs, data models, and distributed services.
- Proven experience as a Platform Architect, Principal Engineer, or Senior Systems Architect.
- Deep understanding of distributed systems, including consensus, fault tolerance, replication, and networking.
- Strong experience with cloud or hybrid infrastructure such as AWS, GCP, bare metal, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
- Expertise in authentication, authorization, cryptography, key management, and other security-critical systems.
- Experience designing highly available systems for financial or mission-critical applications.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to explain complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders.
- Comfort working in a remote, globally distributed team.
- Hands-on experience with Bitcoin, Lightning, Liquid, or blockchain infrastructure is preferred.
- Open-source contribution experience is preferred.
- Familiarity with HSMs, secure enclaves, or hardware-backed key storage is preferred.
- Background in fintech, capital markets, or institutional financial systems is preferred.
- Experience balancing enterprise requirements with decentralized architectures is preferred.
Categories
About Blockstream
Blockstream builds Bitcoin infrastructure and software, including the Liquid sidechain for asset issuance and settlement, the Core Lightning implementation, the Green wallet, and the Jade hardware wallet. It sells enterprise software and consulting to financial institutions and exchanges, and also operates mining and hosting services. Founded in 2014 by Adam Back, it is privately held.