Senior Protocol Engineer, Move

Birdai Labs builds execution-quality infrastructure for Move-based blockchains, bringing the rigor of traditional market structure to onchain markets. The company was co-founded by Kevin Farrelly, who previously built Random Forest Capital and sold it to Franklin Templeton, and Greg Scanlon, a former Citadel quantitative trader and longtime validator operator. We are venture backed and recently closed our seed round.

The role

You will work at the core of our data platform: exact reconstruction of onchain market state across the Move ecosystem, and the production APIs that serve it.

• Read Move contracts for unfamiliar DeFi protocols and derive their exact state and pricing behavior
• Build and extend pipelines that reconstruct onchain market data with full historical depth and real-time freshness
• Design, ship, and operate the production API layer that serves our data externally
• Use AI tooling and automation to scale coverage without scaling headcount
• Work directly with the CTO and quantitative research

What we require

• Elite applied math: invariant derivation, fixed-point arithmetic, numerical solvers, orderbook mechanics
• Move fluency on any Move chain, or an elite Rust and systems background with evidence you master new VMs fast
• Smart contract depth: you can open an unfamiliar DeFi contract and extract its precise economic behavior, including fee paths and edge cases
• Exceptional API engineering: you have designed, shipped, and operated production data APIs (REST and WebSocket, auth, rate limiting, usage metering, versioning, low-latency serving)
• Cryptography: strong working command of hashing, signatures, serialization, and the security reasoning that comes with them
• Engineering: Python, PostgreSQL, high-throughput ingestion, AWS
• AI-native: you use AI coding tools and agents daily, know how to direct, verify, and manage them, and multiply your output without outsourcing correctness
• A verification mindset: nothing ships until it matches the chain exactly

Signals we love

• DEX or market microstructure experience
• Competitive programming or olympiad results
• Quant finance background
• Contributions anywhere in the Move ecosystem
• A data API you built that paying customers depend on

Process

1. Intro call (30 minutes)

2. Technical screen: derive pool math from real Move source

3. Take Home (1-2 weeks): reconstruct onchain state for a live protocol against ground truth, and serve it through a clean endpoint

4. Offer

Compensation and logistics

Competitive salary plus meaningful early equity, calibrated to experience. Employment through Deel as a contractor or full-time employee, your preference. Remote within India with a daily overlap window with US Pacific hours.