Research 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 a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer exists.

The role

We're looking for a Research Engineer to join our growing R&D Engineering team. As a Research Engineer, you'll take part in cutting-edge research and development paving the way for products that protect digital assets and preserve self-sovereignty 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

• Research, design and build high-fidelity proof-of-concepts for upcoming features
• Serve as a bridge to the Product Engineering team, providing cryptographic guidance, code reviews, and troubleshooting for complex protocol-level issues
• Uphold rigorous security standards and best-practice cryptographic principles before they transition to production
• Own and maintain key R&D initiatives and drive community contributions
• Work closely with clients and partners, helping them to navigate and implement post-quantum migrations
• Monitor the evolving blockchain and post-quantum cryptography landscape, identifying emerging threats or new primitives for adoption
• Translate complex concepts into digestible technical blog posts, documentation, and whitepapers solidifying P11's thought leadership in the space

What you bring

• Strong experience in Rust. You'll be expected to work on performance-critical research or protocol-level code. Strong proficiency in a similar systems programming language may also be acceptable
• Experience writing, testing, and deploying secure smart contracts in Solidity
• Experience building robust applications or tooling in TypeScript. You should be comfortable using TypeScript to model complex logic and interact with cryptographic libraries
• Demonstrable experience writing clean, secure code that was shipped to a production system in a Web3 company
• Deep understanding of cryptographic primitives (hashes, signatures, encryption) and their practical implementation/limitations
• Comprehensive understanding of EVM internals, cross-chain dynamics, and the broader modular/L2 ecosystem
• Demonstrated excellence in problem solving, e.g. hard problems solved in a company, high achievements in academic problem solving, hackathon wins
• Strong technical writing skills. The ability to explain "why it matters" to a non-technical audience and "how it works" to a technical one
• Public contributions to the blockchain ecosystem, e.g. blog posts, valuable forum engagement, valuable social media contributions, useful open source projects

What we'd love to see

• Understanding of ERC-4337 smart wallet patterns e.g. EOA vs AA concepts, multisig basics, validation flows, bundlers/paymasters
• Experience with frontend development in React (or similar)
• Experience with post-quantum cryptography schemes
• Experience developing and maintaining protocols
• Experience with decentralised identity, DIDComm, encrypted messaging protocols
• Experience using AI to maximize work efficiency
• Experience with formal verification

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.