Backend Engineer (Solana)

ocation: We are a fully remote team, and although we hire almost globally, there is a preference for this role to be based in Europe or remote +/- 4 hours CEST time

Please note we’re not hiring from the US, Australia, or New Zealand

Position: Full-time contractor

We are looking for an enthusiastic, self-motivated backend engineer with Solana experience to help build the next generation of decentralized trading protocols on Solana. You will own and improve our backend services while contributing to the design and implementation of new features. This is a chance to work on technically challenging off-chain systems and developer-facing APIs, ensuring performant, reliable features for CoW Swap on Solana.

Our Tech Stack

• Backend Code: Rust, Tokio, Cargo, Git (https://github.com/cowprotocol/services)

• Infrastructure: Pulumi, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Grafana, Prometheus, Elasticsearch

• Other codebases: Typescript, Python, Solidity

What you will do

• Architect and develop off-chain services (core auction protocol, orderbook) to support feature growth and evolving needs on Solana

• Write concurrent backend systems in Rust and interact with Solana smart contracts, expanding your understanding of Solana programs and on-chain mechanics

• Participate in our on-call rotation to maintain reliability of production systems (on-call work is additionally compensated)

• Collaborate closely with researchers and the product team to ship features and solve complex technical problems

• Deliver high-quality code from concept to production, including monitoring and observability of production systems

• Provide thoughtful code reviews for colleagues’ contributions to our open-source codebase

Who you are

• 5+ years of production experience with systems-level programming languages, with at least 1+ year of hands-on production experience using Rust

• Practical experience in Solana development (writing/maintaining programs in Rust, using Anchor or equivalent frameworks)

• Strong computer science, programming, and algorithmic skills

• Experience in architecting, operating, and maintaining complex software systems

• Commitment to code quality, readability, observability, and testability

• Proactive in giving technical direction to improve performance, prevent issues, and optimize data usage

• Team player with excellent communication skills, able to collaborate effectively in a remote-first environment

• Ideally, senior-level experience mentoring colleagues and providing technical direction

• Excited to contribute to CoW Swap on Solana and help shape a cross-chain DeFi protocol