About this role

We are seeking a Head of Protocol Engineering to lead the technical architecture, execution, and operating standards for Compound’s smart contract and protocol stack.

Reporting to the CTO, this role is for a technical leader who can move comfortably between system design, smart contract implementation, security analysis, engineering management, and high-stakes product decisions. You will partner closely with the product, risk, security, and design leaders to define the protocol roadmap and build the team required to deliver it.

You will be expected to lead from the front: setting architectural direction, reviewing critical code, making difficult tradeoffs, developing exceptional engineers, and ensuring that security and execution quality are never compromised.

What you’ll do

• Own the technical architecture and engineering execution for Compound’s protocol roadmap, from early design through mainnet deployment and post-launch iteration.

• Represent Protocol Engineering in governance forums, community calls, technical AMAs, ecosystem events, and partner discussions, helping build confidence in Compound’s technical direction and execution.

• Lead the design of modular lending and borrowing infrastructure, including liquidity architecture, collateral systems, market configuration, risk boundaries, liquidations, interest-rate mechanisms, accounting, and governance controls.

• Define clear ownership boundaries between onchain and offchain systems, balancing decentralization, security, cost, performance, and operational flexibility.

• Establish engineering standards for smart-contract development, testing, code review, audit engagement, formal verification where appropriate, deployments, monitoring, incident response, and operational readiness.

• Build, lead, and develop a world-class protocol engineering team with strong technical judgment, high ownership, and a security-first mindset.

• Remain hands-on in critical architecture reviews, code paths, security decisions, audit remediation, and major protocol releases.

• Partner with product and risk leadership to evaluate protocol tradeoffs, model failure scenarios, and ensure designs are economically, technically, and operationally sound.

• Guide protocol changes through technical design, implementation, audit, testnet validation, governance review, deployment, and post-launch monitoring.

• Serve as the senior technical counterpart to external auditors, security firms, infrastructure partners, integrators, and ecosystem contributors.

• Review and challenge critical technical decisions, ensuring systems remain understandable, maintainable, extensible, and secure at scale.

• Build a culture of high ownership, rigorous execution, direct communication, and continuous improvement.

• Lead protocol incident readiness, including emergency controls, response processes, postmortems, and long-term remediation.

• Establish practical standards and guardrails for responsible use of AI-assisted development tools, ensuring that speed gains never replace independent technical judgment, security review, testing, or code ownership.

What success looks like

• Compound has a clear, credible protocol architecture that supports growth without compromising security, maintainability, decentralization, or operational resilience.

• The protocol engineering team translates product, risk, and governance requirements into strong technical specifications, well-scoped plans, and production-ready systems—with clear ownership and high operating standards.

• Security is embedded throughout the lifecycle: architecture, implementation, review, audit, deployment, monitoring, incident response, and durable remediation.

• Compound ships protocol upgrades with disciplined execution, strong validation, well-documented tradeoffs, and high confidence in production readiness.

• You build and develop a highly respected protocol engineering team known internally and externally for technical rigor, sound judgment, accountability, and continuous improvement.

• Compound’s technical direction, major changes, and operational learnings are communicated clearly and credibly to governance participants, developers, integrators, security researchers, and ecosystem partners.

• You become a key strategic partner to the CTO and executive team on decisions that shape the protocol’s long-term direction.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including substantial experience leading teams that build complex distributed systems, financial infrastructure, or blockchain protocols.

• 4+ years of experience in crypto, DeFi, smart contract engineering, protocol security, or closely related technical domains.

• Demonstrated experience owning the architecture and delivery of production systems that manage meaningful financial value or operate in adversarial environments.

• Deep expertise in Solidity, EVM architecture, smart contract security, upgradeability, protocol design, and production deployment practices.

• Strong knowledge of DeFi primitives and risk mechanics, including lending markets, collateralization, liquidations, oracle design, liquidity management, and governance systems.

• Proven experience hiring, coaching, and performance-managing engineers, including setting clear expectations, developing technical leaders, and building high-performing teams.

• Strong product and business judgment, with the ability to distinguish between technically interesting work and the work that most materially advances the protocol.

• Experience working with security researchers, audit firms, formal verification providers, and incident-response processes.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical tradeoffs to executives, risk leaders, auditors, partners, governance participants, and community stakeholders.

• A high degree of ownership, calmness under pressure, and willingness to make and defend difficult technical decisions.

Qualifications

• Experience working on lending protocols, money markets, credit systems, liquidation engines, oracle systems, or risk infrastructure.

• Prior experience collaborating with external auditors and remediating audit findings.

• Familiarity with protocol governance, timelocks, multisigs, emergency controls, and secure deployment processes.

• Experience with backend systems, indexing, APIs, data pipelines, or developer tooling that support onchain applications.

• A demonstrated understanding of DeFi market structure, liquidity dynamics, and the operational realities of running live financial protocols.

About Compound

Compound Foundation supports the development, adoption, and responsible growth of Compound - one of DeFi's original lending protocols with over $57B in loans processed - and related decentralized finance tools. We’re now focused on Compound’s next chapter: building Compound V4, the universal credit layer.