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Ava Labs is seeking a Staff Engineer to join the Platform Engineering Group as the primary maintainer of AvalancheGo and technical anchor for the node domain. This is a hands-on, high-impact role responsible for the consensus, peer-to-peer networking, state sync, VM plugin interface, and EVM integration systems that power the Avalanche blockchain.
You will own the health and technical direction of the AvalancheGo codebase, serving as the final code review gate for all network-critical contributions from both internal teams and the open-source community. Key responsibilities include maintaining production quality standards, designing and advancing critical blockchain systems, establishing observability and reliability practices, and managing the engineering lifecycle for network upgrades.
This role requires setting and enforcing engineering standards across the team, defining what production readiness means, and championing a culture of excellence. You will mentor senior engineers into larger scope, run design reviews that measurably improve outcomes, and deliberately distribute context to prevent becoming a single point of failure.
Additionally, you will drive protocol direction through the Avalanche Community Proposal (ACP) process, originating and championing proposals that position AvalancheGo for long-term upgrades. You'll evangelize the project internally and externally through technical documentation, release notes, and engagement with the open-source community.
The ideal candidate has operated at Staff scope before, demonstrating the ability to create workstreams that other teams depend on. You influence without authority, driving technical direction across teams through alignment and credibility. You're comfortable diving into large unfamiliar codebases, treating code as the source of truth, and making impactful contributions quickly. You understand what makes great open-source projects succeed—not just code quality, but review culture, contributor experience, and ecosystem trust.
