Lead Engineer, Frontier Traders at Solana

The Solana Foundation, a non-profit based in Zug, Switzerland, is dedicated to advancing the adoption, decentralization, and security of the Solana network. We aim to create a world where individuals maintain ownership of their data and interact freely across permissionless networks. We are seeking a talented Lead Engineer to take full ownership of Frontier Traders, our community and rewards platform. Frontier Traders acts as a vital hub for elite firms and traders operating at the edge of emerging markets and technologies within the Solana ecosystem. It consolidates trading activity from various venues, allowing users to earn rewards, compete in prize pool campaigns, climb leaderboards, and unlock VIP tiers that grant access to rebates and essential infrastructure. The product meticulously tracks spot and perpetual volume across all Solana venues, covering RWAs, tokenized equities, and the broader asset tail. Given its user base of demanding proprietary trading firms, market makers, and high frequency traders, precision, speed, and intuitive design are paramount. This role is for a highly capable engineer who excels at building exceptional products. You will not be assigned narrow tickets; instead, you will own the technical vision end to end. This involves designing frontend architectures, grappling with APIs, data models, and indexing infrastructure, all while ensuring the resulting experience is polished and reflects deep understanding of the trading domain. You will collaborate closely with Foundation stakeholders and the professional trading firms utilizing the platform. **Your Responsibilities Will Include:**

• Taking full technical ownership of Frontier Traders from conception through delivery, with a primary focus on the trader-facing product and user experience.
• Developing sophisticated and responsive interfaces for elite traders, translating intricate market, portfolio, rewards, and trading data into simple, intuitive products.
• Shipping real time product experiences, including portfolio views, activity feeds, leaderboards, and campaign dashboards, ensuring high speed and accuracy even under heavy market load.
• Managing new features from initial idea through architecture, implementation, and launch, making critical decisions across the frontend, APIs, backend services, and data layers.
• Building the underlying product mechanics for campaigns, points, prize pools, and VIP tiers, allowing users to clearly comprehend their activity, performance, and rewards.
• Working with Solana on-chain data and indexing systems to accurately represent trading activity across both spot and perpetual venues in the ecosystem.
• Owning integrations with key ecosystem partners across DEX venues, launchpads, wallets, and data providers, converting these technical integrations into seamless user experiences.
• Partnering directly with traders, firms, and market makers to deeply understand their operational needs and translating that feedback into tangible product improvements.
• Establishing and maintaining the engineering standard for the product regarding frontend architecture, performance, code quality, testing, observability, and overall reliability.
• Making sound build versus integrate decisions to ensure Frontier moves quickly while upholding the high standards expected by sophisticated traders.
• Working closely with design, product, and the Foundation's Trading and Growth teams to guide both the strategic direction and the execution of the product.

**What You Should Ideally Bring to the Table:**

• A proven track record of successfully building and launching user-facing products with clear end to end ownership.
• Deep mastery of modern frontend engineering, specifically TypeScript/JavaScript and frameworks like React/Next.js, with experience developing complex, data-dense applications.
• Robust full stack engineering skills, comfortable operating across frontend applications, APIs, backend services, and database infrastructure as required by the product.
• Demonstrated success building real time, data intensive interfaces where performance, accuracy, state management, and usability are critical success factors.
• Strong product sensibility and the proven ability to make thoughtful UX choices, moving beyond simple implementation of provided designs.
• Experience with data pipelines, indexing, or real time systems, with sufficient depth to understand the entire data lifecycle from source to user view.
• Familiarity with Solana, including concepts like accounts, transactions, program interactions, and reliable onchain data indexing.
• Knowledge of DeFi market mechanics, such as spot and perpetual venues, AMMs, order books, and the dynamics of maker and taker fees.
• Comfort navigating a full product stack and taking responsibility even for areas outside your immediate primary focus.
• The ability to thrive amidst ambiguity, evolving priorities, and limited existing processes.
• Exceptional communication skills, especially when interacting with demanding external users to translate complex needs into effective technical and product solutions.

**Bonus Qualifications:**

• Prior experience building trading interfaces, financial dashboards, or products utilized by sophisticated financial users.
• Experience designing incentive systems, points, or loyalty programs at scale, including their potential adversarial aspects.
• Hands on experience with Solana infrastructure tools such as Helius, Pyth, Geyser plugins, or custom indexers.
• Familiarity with Rust or developing applications that interact directly with Solana programs.
• Contributions to Solana or DeFi open source projects.
• Active participation in the onchain space with strong opinions regarding existing products.