Overview

The Solana Foundation is dedicated to the adoption, decentralization, and security of the Solana network. Our mission is to help support and grow the Solana network and its community while driving mass adoption for blockchain. The Solana Foundation is working to realize a world where individuals own their data, use permissionless networks, and transfer information freely around the world.

What is the job?

As a large player in the Solana community, the Solana Foundation should position itself as a thought and behavior leader in promoting the health, decentralization and censorship resistance of the Solana network.  The Head of Staking Ecosystem will be responsible for designing and implementing the Foundation’s staking strategies to ensure that the organization’s delegations on the Solana network are effectively and responsibly supporting the Solana validator community while also utilizing the assets available to be promotive of the builders on Solana.

The Head of Staking Ecosystem will also act as a representative and ambassador to the Solana community of stakers, validators and integrators.  You will support the Foundation’s relationships with the community of staking service providers, such as wallets, stake pool operators, custodians and analytics platforms, understanding and advocating for best practices which support both the decentralization of the Solana network as well as the health of the validator community.  The Head of Staking Ecosystem will also work with all relevant parties to advocate for the adoption of responsible and safe staking tools and integrations with the broader ecosystem.

Finally, the Head of Staking Ecosystem should be a ruthless advocate of decentralization and censorship resistance.  You should understand and monitor the ever-shifting human, economic and technical layout of the Solana network, identifying weaker points along the multiple axes of decentralization, and propose and implement solutions both within the Foundation’s own staking strategies as well as in the broader community.

This is a senior-level position reporting to the Executive Director.

Initiatives

This is a multi-faceted role that has elements of program management, long-term strategy setting, technical execution, financial analysis and community and institutional communications.

Initiative include, but are not limited to:

– Work with leadership within the Foundation and with thought leaders across the ecosystem to articulate and advocate for responsible treasury deployment strategies via staking.

– Own the Foundation Delegation Program.  Manage the current delegation program, propose and implement (with the support of our web and tech teams) improvements to the staking criteria and the user/validator experience.

– Manage Foundation engagement with community stake pools.  Foundation desires to support technically and economically the success of community-driven stake strategies.

– Advocate for and support the adoption/integration of stake pools and decentralization-promoting staking behavior and tools with institutional custodians and other interfaces where Solana community members might encounter staking.

Candidate Background/Experience

A successful candidate must have a very strong understanding of the economic and technical fundamentals of consensus staking on Proof of Stake blockchains, ideally Solana.  The candidate should have a firm grasp on the potentially conflicting interests of stakers and validators.

  • Technical experience in validator operations is a huge plus.
  • Seriously good spreadsheet skills, and the inclination to use them.
  • Comfortable using Linux or similar CLI driven operating systems.
  • Experience using scripting languages such as Python, Bash or similar to build tools to analyze datasets, or to quickly assess the state of the network.
  • Ability to extract the story from the data.
  • Excellent written/spoken communication skills.  Ability and enthusiasm to explain/pitch/sell/defend your proposed strategies to a diverse audience.  Ability to explain complex topics in accessible language.

Other

US working hours strongly preferred

Willingness/ability to travel periodically to SF or NYC to co-locate with the team.