Software Engineering Intern (ZK)

This role is in-person at our NYC office. About us Axiom is enabling a new wave of smart contract applications with our cutting-edge use of zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. We are a small but incredibly strong team backed by the best investors in crypto ($20M Series A) https://blog.axiom.xyz/funding/, located in the heart of NYC. We recently released OpenVM https://blog.axiom.xyz/openvm, a performant and modular zkVM framework built for customization and extensibility. OpenVM allows developers to verify the correct execution of Rust code in a flexible and performant way. We are building new products using OpenVM and supporting teams building on OpenVM. Our team Our founders Yi Sun https://yisun.io and Jonathan Wang https://www.jonathanpwang.com met while studying math at Harvard and have been working on ZK since early 2022. Together, they wrote some of the most performant ZK circuits for elliptic curve cryptography and Ethereum data reads before starting Axiom. Before Axiom, Yi researched probability and machine learning as a professor at UChicago Statistics and did a math PhD at MIT. He was an advisor for Gauntlet and Scroll and worked at an HFT startup from inception to profitable trading. Jonathan published number theory research in top math journals and did a math PhD at UChicago. Our engineering team includes alums of Applied Intuition, Coinbase, Color, Google, Neon, and Snap as well as IMO, IPhO, and Codeforces winners. Why intern at Axiom? - Our interns ship real production code. - Our interns work directly with Axiom's co-founders as a member of our engineering team. - Our interns work on interesting projects at the heart of our product. Past intern projects include: - Writing ZK circuits to verifiably access past Ethereum state and transactions. - Designing and implementing core primitives for ZK-verified execution of a virtual machine (shipped as part of OpenVM https://blog.axiom.xyz/openvm!). - Building and optimizing page-level operators for a ZK-verified database backend. Axiom is a great fit for you if you want to: - Experience being at a small, early stage startup in NYC and be mentored by an extremely strong engineering team. - Work at the cutting edge of technology that turns mathematical theory into production applications. - Be in a role with direct and outsized impact early in your career. The role As a Software Engineering Intern (ZK), you will be implementing and optimizing cutting-edge cryptographic code for zero-knowledge proof generation—no prior ZK experience required. You will be working on interesting and challenging problems necessary to make ZK accessible to smart contract developers. Your responsibilities include: - Optimize cryptographic algorithms for ZK proof generation together with our engineering team. - Design and implement novel ZK circuits to enable new types of operations to be efficiently verified in ZK. - Collaborate with our team on protocol and product design to integrate ZK primitives into our on-chain products. Who you are - You have a strong foundation in mathematics, computer science, or cryptography, with a curiosity about zero-knowledge proofs. - You have proficiency in Rust, C/C++, or a similarly performant backend language. We work primarily in Rust. - Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively and collaborate within a team. - Strong work ethic, high ownership, and tenacity to solve problems. - There is no requirement to have any ZK background. We have seen success from backgrounds outside of ZK, including math / physics / theoretical computer science research, competitive programming, or systems programming.

Axiom is enabling a new wave of smart contract applications with our cutting-edge use of zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. We are a small but incredibly strong team backed by the best investors in crypto ($20M Series A), located in the heart of NYC.