Staff Performance Engineer, Trading Infrastructure
About Helius Helius is building the core infrastructure for Solana - empowering developers to create the next generation of crypto-powered applications. Our mission is to accelerate the development of internet capital markets by making it easier, faster, and more intuitive to build on-chain. Thousands of teams - from early-stage startups to industry leaders like Coinbase, Phantom, and Jupiter - rely on Helius APIs, webhooks, and indexing tools to power their products. Backed by Haun Ventures, Founders Fund, and Foundation Capital, we’re a small, senior team obsessed with performance, simplicity, and scalability in decentralized systems. Read our Helius Manifesto to see how we work and what we value.
About the Role
We're looking for a Staff Performance Engineer to own the most latency-critical systems at Helius. These services are responsible for streaming Solana's state changes across our global network and providing real-time data APIs to traders, exchanges, and DeFi protocols. They handle massive throughput, and small optimizations create outsized impact. You'll lead performance strategy, drive cross-team architectural decisions, and dig into the hardest bottlenecks to make our products faster and more efficient. The problems are challenging, the expectations are high, and the improvements you ship will be felt across the Solana ecosystem.
What You'll Do
Set technical direction for performance across Helius' most latency-critical systems, influencing architecture and engineering standards company-wide Profile, tune, and optimize the low-level Rust services that power traders and financial institutions Design systems for low-latency environments where microseconds matter Lead cross-team initiatives to identify and eliminate systemic performance bottlenecks Own foundational systems end-to-end and keep them simple, reliable, and easy to operate Mentor engineers and raise the bar on performance engineering and operational rigor What You'll Bring 8+ years of systems-level engineering in Rust or C++ Deep experience tuning high-throughput, latency-sensitive systems Track record of leading ambiguous, cross-team technical projects and shipping durable systems Strong intuition for hardware, operating systems, and network performance Ability to operate with high ownership on difficult technical problems and make decisions legible to stakeholders A desire to push performance to the limit, not just make it "good enough"
Nice to Have
Experience in trading systems (DeFi or TradFi) Background in performance-obsessed environments like Cloudflare, Netflix, or similar Why Helius? High-impact work: Your code will power applications used by millions across the Solana ecosystem, including Coinbase, Jupiter, and Phantom Serious engineering: Build fast, reliable systems and user experiences across distributed infra and high-throughput backends Ownership & growth: Lead critical initiatives, influence architecture and product direction, and take on more responsibility as the company scales Remote-first flexibility: Work where you’re most effective with a flexible, fully distributed team Competitive comp & perks: Market-leading salary, meaningful equity, generous vacation, wellness budgets, and support for learning and travel Mission-driven team: Join ambitious builders who move fast, take ownership, and are shaping the future of decentralized apps