Semiotic Labs - Rust Engineer

We are a team of multidisciplinary experts in artificial intelligence, cryptography, and software engineering who collaborate to build solutions for unsolved problems in web3. We work on challenges such as trust-minimized micropayments, low-latency request processing, data verification, and dynamic pricing. We’ve published research at prestigious AI conferences like NeurIPS and developed novel optimization algorithms. We make web3 smarter and verifiable.

We are a core developer of The Graph protocol ($1B+ market cap), an indexing protocol for organizing and accessing the world’s data. We are also the parent company of Odos, a market-leading liquidity aggregator that supports $5B+ in monthly trading volume.

You can learn more about Semiotic Labs at semiotic.ai or by watching this presentation.

The Role

We’re looking for a Rust Engineer who’s excited about building scalable, cryptographically secure systems for web3 infrastructure. You’ll work on GraphTally, implementing performant, reliable components that enable stateless, one-way payment channels at scale. This role is ideal for someone who thrives on solving protocol design challenges and building robust, production-ready Rust code.

This role is perfect for those who thrive in a multidisciplinary team solving complex, unsolved problems through research and engineering. You'll excel here if you're excited about working on a small, agile team where your daily work drives innovation—both internally and across the web3 ecosystem. Above all, you should be passionate about delivering real value to users.

What You’ll Do

• Design, implement, and maintain core components of the GraphTally protocol in Rust.
• Collaborate with researchers and protocol engineers to refine and evolve the architecture.
• Optimize signature verification, message processing, and batching for high-throughput performance.
• Implement secure state transition logic, trust-minimized payment flows, and smart contract interactions.
• Work closely with smart contract engineers to ensure seamless on-chain integration (mainly on L2s like Arbitrum).
• Write clean, testable, and efficient code with a focus on security and correctness.

Contribute to technical documentation, specifications, and developer tooling to support GraphTally adoption.

• 3+ years of professional experience writing high-performance, production-quality async code in Rust.
• Experience in designing and implementing remote APIs (REST, JSON-RPC, gRPC)
• Experience in responsive microservices design and development
• Experience with databases (Postgres, Redis)
• Experience with Docker.
• Deep understanding of cryptographic primitives, especially ECDSA and digital signature schemes.
• Proficient with Rust’s async/await model, leveraging futures, tokio, or async-std
• Understanding of asynchronous state machines for managing complex protocol flows
• Familiarity with zero-knowledge proofs, state/payment channels, or escrow mechanisms is a plus.
• Strong grasp of trust-minimized systems, distributed protocols, or payment rails in a web3 context.
• Experience working with Ethereum L2s (like Arbitrum, Optimism) and integrating with smart contracts.
• Proficiency with testing, benchmarking, and debugging asynchronous Rust applications in the context of web3, using tools like anvil.
• Clear communication, curiosity, and a strong sense of ownership.

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with The Graph protocol or Indexer infrastructure.
• Exposure to decentralized microservice architectures or multi-agent systems.
• Prior work on gas-optimized smart contracts or cryptographic batch verification.
• Experience with zkSNARKs, RAVs, or verifiable off-chain aggregation techniques.

Why Join Semiotic Labs

• Be part of a small, high-caliber team solving cutting-edge problems in decentralized infrastructure.
• Work on a deeply technical and meaningful mission that helps scale web3.
• Shape the direction of a foundational protocol used by agents and services across the ecosystem.
• Fully remote, async-friendly team with competitive compensation and token upside.