Lead Blockchain Back-end Engineer – Build the Core Technology Behind Variational

About Variational Variational is building a decentralized derivatives protocol for professional trading. Our focus is on building reliable infrastructure that powers everything behind the trading experience—from order execution and settlement to blockchain indexing, risk management, and protocol services. We've already built the first version of the protocol and an early version of Variational Pro. Now we're rebuilding and expanding parts of the platform as we prepare for the next stage of growth. The Role We're looking for an experienced backend engineer who enjoys building distributed systems and solving infrastructure problems. Most of the work involves designing services that process blockchain events, coordinate protocol state, execute business logic, manage real-time market data, and connect on-chain and off-chain systems reliably. You'll work directly with the founders and have significant influence over the architecture and evolution of the platform. What You'll Build You'll own backend systems across the platform, including: - Blockchain indexing and event processing - Execution and transaction orchestration - Settlement, margin, collateral, and risk services - High-performance APIs and internal services - Market data pipelines and real-time infrastructure - Caching, queues, and asynchronous processing - Monitoring, observability, and production tooling - Cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and operational reliability You'll help design systems that are simple, scalable, fault-tolerant, and easy for the rest of the engineering team to build on. About VAR Token VAR is the native token of the Variational protocol. You'll help build the backend infrastructure that supports VAR across the platform, including distribution services, treasury integrations, protocol automation, buyback-and-burn infrastructure, and the services that connect the token with Variational Pro and future protocol features. What We're Looking For We're looking for engineers who enjoy building backend systems that operate under real-world load. You should have strong experience with several of the following: - Go (preferred), Node.js, Rust, or similar backend languages - Distributed systems and concurrent programming - PostgreSQL, Redis, messaging systems, and caching - Event-driven architectures - Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, and cloud infrastructure - Blockchain infrastructure and Web3 integrations Experience with exchanges, trading platforms, financial systems, or DeFi infrastructure is a strong plus, but we're ultimately looking for engineers who write reliable software, think carefully about system design, and enjoy solving difficult infrastructure problems. What We Offer - Build the backend systems that power the entire platform - Direct collaboration with the founders and core engineering team - High ownership with real architectural influence - Flexible engagement (full-time, part-time, or consulting) - Remote-first environment - Competitive compensation If you're the kind of engineer who enjoys designing distributed systems, optimizing backend performance, and building infrastructure that other engineers depend on every day, we'd love to talk.