Design and specify core communication primitives — identity, authentication, message formats, state transitions, and event propagation.
Develop canonical protocol schemas (events, resources, attestations, capabilities) that external builders can reliably implement.
Architect federation and interoperability models between independent nodes/operators.

Requirements:

5+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience building distributed systems or web-scale backend infrastructure.
Experience designing or contributing to communication protocols, APIs, or interoperable standards (not just implementing them).
Strong understanding of identity, authentication, and cryptographic primitives (public/private key systems, signatures, replay protection).

Nice-to-haves:

Experience with decentralized or federated protocols (e.g. AT Protocol/Bluesky-style systems, ActivityPub, Matrix, Nostr, etc.).
Experience working on open commerce or interoperability standards (e.g. UCP or similar initiatives).
Familiarity with blockchain systems and onchain/offchain coordination patterns.

Palette Labs

Palette Labs is building a decentralized protocol for commerce, with its first major use case being food delivery. They are a profitable, growing network that allows customers to order from restaurants, drivers to deliver food, and local operators to spin up their own marketplaces.

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