Senior Protocol Engineer

ABOUT MORPHO

Morpho is a leading Decentralized Finance (DeFi) lending protocol that raised $70 million from Ribbit Capital, a16z crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Variant, Brevan Howard, Pantera, Blocktower, and 50 others to build an open lending network giving anyone, anywhere, access to the best possible terms. Morpho is experiencing explosive growth, with over $10 billion in deposits on the network, solidifying itself as the new standard for DeFi lending. Now, Morpho is scaling its team of contributors to establish itself as a cornerstone, not just of DeFi, but of a new internet-native financial system.

OUR MISSION

Morpho's mission is to power human ambition with open access to capital. Human ambition has no borders, but the capital to fuel it does. Today's financial system is closed and fragmented. No one sees all opportunities, most overpay, and some are excluded entirely. We believe capital should flow efficiently to where it's needed most - giving anyone, anywhere, access to the best possible terms.

LOCATION

Paris or remote (from -5h GMT up to +2h GMT to ensure sufficient overlap with the rest of the team).

HOW WE WORK

We move fast on hard problems in a nascent market with no set playbook: navigating uncertainty is part of the job. You'll be challenged: anyone can question work and decisions must be justified. We keep a high bar and match it with high support: we help each other unblock and share context openly, with low ego. More about our values: morpho.org/jobs http://morpho.org/jobs.

ROLE

The mission of this role is to accelerate Morpho's protocol roadmap by contributing across the full lifecycle of protocol development, from research and mechanism design through Solidity implementation, formal verification, and audit cycles. You will work alongside the protocol team to run parallel workstreams on new lending primitives, liquidation improvements, oracle integrations, and fixed-rate loans, while thinking adversarially about security and system design.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Research and design new lending mechanisms, liquidation strategies, and oracle integrations with the protocol team to ship production-ready improvements that extend Morpho's capabilities.

• Write and review production Solidity code for smart contracts securing significant TVL, prioritising correctness, gas efficiency, and simplicity.

• Lead medium-to-large protocol initiatives end-to-end, from research through design, implementation, and deployment, potentially coordinating across multiple teams.

• Think adversarially about protocol design, identifying attack vectors, edge cases, and failure modes before they reach production.

• Prototype new protocol ideas using formal analysis, simulation, or verification to validate mechanism design before committing to full implementation.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with engineering and leadership on architecture decisions to keep Morpho's protocol stack coherent and minimal.

• Review the team's research and conduct literature reviews to bring external insights and challenge existing designs with fresh perspectives.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

FIRST 30 DAYS

You've built a deep working knowledge of Morpho v1 and Vault v2 codebases. You've paired with Adrien and Mathis on active protocol workstreams, started contributing ideas in protocol calls, and understand how the team designs, reviews, and ships.

FIRST 4 MONTHS

You have complete command of Morpho v1 and v2 at the level of existing team members. You independently own the design and implementation of new lending primitives or protocol improvements such as liquidations, oracles, or fixed-rate loans. You are completely autonomous in research tasks, contribute to trade-off discussions on protocol architecture, and have shipped production smart contracts through the audit cycle.

IN 1 YEAR

You've led a meaningful protocol initiative end-to-end with a large design space (think pre-liquidations, auto-rolling, mempool/router work). You shape architectural decisions on Morpho's roadmap and are a trusted technical voice the protocol team relies on for cross-cutting design calls. You are a force de proposition, regularly surfacing new ideas and directions.

MUST-HAVE EXPERIENCE & SKILLS

• Master's degree in a quantitative field (Math, Computer Science, Physics, Statistics, Economics) or equivalent depth of knowledge.

• 5+ years of experience in software architectural design and implementation of complex systems.

• 2+ years of experience in blockchain R&D, with a strong track record in protocol design and implementation.

• Excellent abstraction capacity: able to quickly understand complex mechanisms and distil them to their essentials.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical ideas concisely and contribute productively to fast-paced research discussions.

• A good theoretician with a practical sense: you can design elegant systems but you also ship fast and make pragmatic trade-offs.

• Comfort operating in fast-changing, ambiguous contexts where the playbook doesn't exist yet.

• Strong ownership and autonomy, you don't wait to be told what to do next.

• Creativity and critical thinking: able to challenge designs and propose novel solutions, not just execute.

• Team-first mindset, low ego, genuine curiosity about DeFi and the problems Morpho is solving.

• Humble.

WHY JOIN MORPHO

• You'll design and ship core lending primitives securing billions in TVL. Very few protocol teams offer this level of direct impact on production systems at this scale.

• The work spans mechanism design, formal analysis, Solidity implementation, and audit preparation. If you want intellectual depth on genuinely hard problems, this is one of the best seats in DeFi.

• You'll join a small, elite protocol team of former academics and research engineers who built Morpho from ~600 lines of code. Your colleagues include PhDs who transitioned into production protocol work.

• Morpho is backed by a16z, Ribbit Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Pantera, and others, with $10B+ in deposits. The protocol is the new standard for DeFi lending, and you'd be shaping its next chapter.

• Comp is P90 base via Pave benchmarks plus MORPHO token grants. Relocation support available for candidates moving to Paris.

PERKS & BENEFITS

We design benefits around deep work and growth, so you can do the best work of your career. Expect fair, top-tier compensation, real flexibility, time together in Paris, great health coverage, and support to keep learning.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and hire based on talent, potential, and values alignment.

READY TO SHAPE THE FUTURE OF FINANCE?