Founding Principal Engineer

Joyride is building the first dedicated 0DTE options exchange to provide better leverage for crypto traders. Derivatives present the single largest opportunity to bring traditional finance on-chain with over $3.5 trillion dollars of notional volume traded in the U.S. every day. We are developing a world-class exchange using a hybrid architecture: a central limit order book (CLOB) for low latency execution coupled with a blockchain for transparent, non-custodial settlement.

0DTE options have massive Gamma risk—prices move violently as expiration approaches. This presents a unique challenge for an exchange to operate safely. Balancing Solvency & Capital Efficiency: Our portfolio margin engine must ensure that traders can always meet the obligations to their counterparties while minimizing the amount of collateral they’re required to post. Execution Speed: To efficiently provide liquidity and avoid toxic flow, market makers need to update orders in milliseconds. Even the fastest blockchains today are too slow. Trust & Verifiability: Traders demand self-custody and transparency. They won’t deposit funds into a black box they don’t control. Availability: Global capital markets never sleep. Our exchange must be dependable and reliable, enabling traders to execute orders and withdrawals 24/7. As our Founding Principal Engineer, your mandate will be to solve this difficult challenge. You will architect a hybrid exchange engine that matches orders off-chain at the speed of light but settles them on-chain with cryptographic proof validity. What you will build: The Trusted Matching Engine: Architect a high-frequency Central Limit Order Book (CLOB). It must handle massive throughput without the latency drag of a blockchain while maintaining verifiability. The Trust Bridge: Design the cryptographic system that proves to the blockchain that the off-chain match was valid. We must ensure that the exchange operators cannot front-run or alter the order book. Atomic Settlement: Write the programs that handle the movement of collateral based on the proofs generated by your off-chain engine. Risk & Liquidation: Build a real-time risk engine capable of liquidating 0DTE positions instantly to protect the protocol from bad debt, even during high network congestion. Who you are: High-Performance Systems Expert: You understand exactly how your code maps to hardware. You prioritize memory layouts, lock-free data structures, and concurrency patterns to squeeze every cycle out of the CPU. Architectural Polymath: You are comfortable traversing the gap between high-performance cloud infrastructure and trustless state machines. Security Minded: You think like an adversary. When you see a “hybrid” architecture, your first thought is “How do I break the link between the server and the chain?” Requirements: 5+ years of backend systems engineering (Rust, C++, or Go) Deep proficiency with Rust Familiarity with Solana and EVM development Knowledge of event-driven architectures and asynchronous programming Experience designing hybrid architecture Strong grasp of applied cryptography Bonus: Experience building trading systems (matching engines, risk management) Background in high-frequency trading or financial engineering Previous work on a centralized exchange or CLOB DEX

Engineering