About the role

Looking to join a world-class blockchain development team? Ava Labs makes it simple to deploy high-performance solutions for Web3, led by innovations on Avalanche. The company was founded by Cornell computer scientists, who partnered with Wall Street veterans and early Web3 leaders to execute a promising vision for redefining the way people build permissionless networks. Ava Labs is redefining the way people create value with Web3. Join us as we empower people to easily and freely digitize all the world's assets on one open, programmable blockchain platform.

We are looking for a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to join the Forward-Deployed Engineering (FDE) function at Ava Labs. This is a senior individual contributor role sitting within the Platform Engineering Group, reporting to the Head of Forward Deployed Engineering.

FDE is a partner-facing engineering team that designs and ships bespoke solutions for a small set of high-profile regulated financial institutions deploying on Avalanche and also owns key portions of the developer tooling and SDK surface that those partners (and the broader ecosystem) build against. The team operates through deep technical engagements, not back-to-back calls: weeks of hands-on engineering between syncs is the norm.

The right person brings Avalanche stack fluency, hands-on enterprise/on-prem experience, and AI-native execution, and can translate a Director of Engineering's requirements at a regulated financial institution into a working solution without a handoff chain.

What you'll do

Own FDE technical delivery across a named set of institutional partners - designing the architecture across the entire Avalanche stack (node / validator setup, failover procedures, interoperability,...) from partner ask to working output
Pair with Enterprise Go-to-Market on active POCs to close the gap between commercial requirements and production-grade technical solutions
Represent Avalanche credibly in partner-facing technical settings: sit across from Directors of Engineering at financial institutions and translate bespoke asks into scoped requirements without losing the strategic frame
Engage in depth, not volume - most weeks are heads-down implementation work punctuated by focused technical syncs, not a meeting-heavy customer-success cadence
Work hands-on across the Avalanche stack: AvalancheGo, EVM, Interchain Messaging, and validator infrastructure
Design and implement solutions that operate within the constraints regulated institutions actually run: KMS/HSM remote signing, audit trails, restricted-peer networking, backup/restore procedures, firewall topologies
Respond to security assessment requests and technical diligence from institutional partners
Contribute to and maintain the developer tooling and SDK surface owned by FDE. This is the same tooling that underpins partner deployments and the broader Avalanche ecosystem
Harden, extend, and document tooling driven by recurring institutional requirements, so that the next partner inherits a more capable platform than the last
Treat tooling work and partner delivery as a single loop: lessons from each engagement land back in the shared surface
Identify when a one-off partner solution should become a reusable FDE artifact and drive that abstraction
Build and maintain runbooks, technical documentation, and the FDE Protocol Requests database (Notion-tracked)
Accelerate conversion timelines for subsequent regulated partners by compounding the institutional playbook with each engagement
Shadow and contribute to the most complex active engagements early, internalizing the institutional playbook in context
Take primary FDE ownership of named partners as ramp completes, reducing concentration risk on the team
Operate as a credible future #2 within FDE, exhibiting mentorship, end-to-end scope ownership, and comfort representing the function externally

What we're looking for

Hands-on depth across the Avalanche (or a comparable L1/L2) stack: client implementation, EVM, cross-chain messaging, and validator infrastructure - able to design and ship solutions at each layer without senior backup
AI-native execution, proven ability to leverage modern coding assistants and agentic tooling to produce production-grade output at speed
Customer-facing maturity in enterprise or institutional settings; comfortable representing technical depth to senior engineering stakeholders at regulated financial institutions
Strong documentation and operational discipline: you close loops, build runbooks, and maintain the tracked artifacts FDE's institutional partners depend on
Pattern abstraction instinct, you recognize when a bespoke partner solution should be generalized and you drive that productization

Nice to have

Direct experience deploying or operating blockchain infrastructure in production enterprise environments (on-prem or regulated cloud)
Prior exposure to financial institution POC or deployment cycles for critical financial market infrastructure, custody/clearing, or comparable institutional context
Familiarity with Avalanche's ecosystem, architecture, and institutional positioning
Signals of future people-management trajectory: past mentorship, end-to-end scope ownership, comfort representing a technical function externally

About the company & team

If you've ever thought about joining an early stage Web3 company - this is it! We're a global, world-class team of experts in computer science, economics, finance, marketing, and law with offices in New York City and Miami. We're highly passionate about Web3 and redefining the way people build and use finance and decentralized applications of all kinds. The company received early-stage funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant. Join us and be a pioneer in a new technology that will have implications across a range of verticals such as finance, gaming, investing, collectibles, among many others.

Additional information

Ava Labs is committed to diversity in the workplace and we're proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not hire on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, parental status, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, or any other basis protected by local, state or federal law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

Ava Labs is committed to diversity in the workplace and we're proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not hire on basis of race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, parental status, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, or any other basis protected by local, state or federal law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

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