Validator Engineer

Ritual is building a sovereign, execution layer for AI, with a focus on creating a blockchain tailored for AI-native operations. As a Validator Engineer, you will be responsible for ensuring the uptime and performance of Ritual’s validators, managing upgrades and supporting validator operators to facilitate participation across testnet and mainnet.

Responsibilities:

• Build and automate bare-metal & cloud deployments for our validators using our existing full-fledged simulation framework
• Orchestrate client upgrades, parameter changes, and hard-forks with zero downtime across staging and mainnet
• Profile and patch critical paths for optimal performance of the execution and consensus clients
• Produce run-books, maintain clear documentation, and actively support validator operators via Discord to keep staking participation healthy

Requirements:

• 4+ years operating high-availability distributed systems, including direct experience running PoS validators on EVM-based chains
• Proficient in Go and Rust, with the ability to read, debug, and extend both Execution Layer (EL) and Consensus Layer (CL) client code
• Strong grasp of protocol-level concepts such as fork-choice, evidence handling, slashing conditions, and state sync
• Expertise in Kubernetes/Helm, Terraform, and CI/CD workflows — automating everything from container builds to canary deployments
• Advanced Linux user with deep networking knowledge and a strong focus on system hardening and security
• Passionate about observability — logs, metrics, and traces are at the core of every operational decision
• Direct experience supporting external validator operators — including writing documentation, maintaining snapshots, and answering integration questions during testnet or mainnet launches
• Upstream contributions to both execution and consensus clients
• Experience orchestrating GPU workloads or other compute-intensive pipelines
• Familiarity with deploying, maintaining, and tuning open-source AI models
• Experience interfacing with infrastructure partners, custodians, and auditors in high-uptime environment