Dope Hires & Moar Mainnet in March
This is a long overdue post to announce the incredible additions we have made to the team. We closed a round of funding in November led by a16z with a meaty re-up of their optimistic supply from Paradigm. This cash has allowed us to quickly scale up with the brightest minds and sharpest operators in the space.
As a result of being able to hire this kind of talent, we will be launching arbitrary contract deployment on mainnet in March instead of public testnet!! Details to come soon.
We’re hiring now — if you’re anything like these folks below, we want to hire you.
Mark Tyneway (Eng)
Mark was pursuing an academic career as a neuroscientist until he learned about Bitcoin and had to drop everything to learn more about it. He contributed to an alternative implementation of Bitcoin called bcoin, helped to launch Handshake and then joined Optimism to work on scaling Ethereum.
“Blockchain can be used to help us break the inadequate equilibrium our society is stuck in through making coordination problems easier to solve. Optimism is a leader in scalability and working here is a high leverage way to prove that the technology is more than just speculation.”
Mark came to us armed with experience managing and maintaining an open source community geared towards developers. He showed us how to raise the bar on hiring and has been setting the cultural tone with his unmatched work ethic, immaculate vibes, and incredible kindness.
Josh Stein (Ops)
Talk about a winding path to Optimism. Josh went from the Army to being a federal prosecutor, from General Counsel at Zenefits to co-founder & CEO of Harbor. After selling Harbor to BitGo last year, Josh made a solemn vow that he would not go back into crypto but the allure of having a rollicking good time on an audacious team was too tempting.
“The future of Ethereum depends on layer 2 scaling and layer 2 scaling depends on Optimism. And where else can you go where the team forks Ethereum on your third day at work? Stoked on the problem, stoked on the tech, very stoked on the team.”
Josh has whipped the team and the organization into shape as the COO and General Counsel of Optimism with ruthless efficiency. He brings decades of experience to the table and as our first executive hire, showed us just how high we could be setting our expectations as a team.
Christa Sullivan (Ops)
After spending years traveling the US as an operating room nurse, Christa applied her surgical precision and empathy to Operations & Client Advisory at Casa. Now at Optimism, Christa continues to employ her skills toward her ultimate goal of being a part of a technology that could change the world for the better…and becoming a pro at herding these crypto cats.
“The opportunity to work on foundational infrastructure for emergent technology with a team of passionate and dedicated nerds was just too juicy to pass up!”
One of the most common phrases uttered around Christa on the team is “Oh thank god you’re here.” Much of the last year has felt like a mad frenzy and Christa has brought order to chaos with her trademark infectious joy.
Maurelian (Eng)
Prior to joining Optimism, Maurelian co-founded ConsenSys Diligence, one of the original smart contract security auditing firms, and has worked with some of the top protocols in DeFi.
“I joined Optimism for the chance to work with people who know the EVM so well they can “inadvertently” cause a temporary fork in the Ethereum mainnet, as well as the opportunity to prevent them from doing something like that again.”
We were in disbelief on Maurelian’s first day. We couldn’t believe we’d landed such a rockstar hire! Security is absolutely critical, especially on an infrastructure layer like Optimistic Ethereum. Maurelian’s experience brings a new level of rigor & security hygiene to the team. His warmth and empathy have already made him a major hit among our community members.
Matt Masurka (Eng)
Matt Masurka is known to some as Gigamesh, the music producer/DJ alter ego he performed under for the past decade. He topped billboard charts and toured globally, but in 2017 he tumbled down the crypto rabbit hole and forged a path toward a career in Web 3.0 by working on products for Left Field Labs, Google, and Cisco.
“I was attracted to Optimism because of the founding members’ reputation as experienced builders with a uniquely long-term vision. The pragmatic and accessible approach to optimistic rollups that they developed is why I think we are poised to scale Ethereum and expand the reach of Web 3.0.”
The team can often be found bumping Matt’s world famous tunes. Definitely scored a 2-in-1 as Matt’s integration engineering work has eased a ton of pressure off of the stress of supporting a young mainnet deployment.
Annie Ke (Eng)
With a deep enthusiasm for new technology in the form of programmable money, Annie found Optimism after working on crypto protocols at Coinbase. She led Coinbase’s first Day-1 blockchain launch, working on everything from key generation to node infrastructure. Annie thinks layer 2 scalability will be a yuge game changer and cannot wait to build it with a team who loves memes.
“Every conversation I had with the team left me energized and excited for the future. Building infrastructure will unlock so many use cases; at Optimism it comes with a side of friends we make along the way.”
We knew we’d landed a sick hire when messages came pouring in from Annie’s former colleagues, congratulating us on catching a rockstar. She is clearly sorely missed, but we’re happy to report that we have plenty of open positions for those who want to work with her again :D.
And last but not least,
Liam Horne (Eng)
Speaking of rockstars… we were wide eyed and slack jawed when Liam agreed to join us in the battle towards crypto nirvana. We couldn’t contain our enthusiasm and immediately told a bunch of people. Each time, the answer was the same “No fucking way!” Well, yeah fucking way, we got Liam!!
“Having collaborated on researching these layer 2 strategies alongside Optimism’s Co-Founders Ben, Karl, and Jing over the years, the thing that I’ve admired most about their approach has always been staying true to Ethereum’s founding philosophies. It has been extremely clear since first meeting them that they want to see the community as a whole succeed. — https://liamhorne.com/optimism
Join us!
Want to hang with a nerdy, optimistic community? Come join the discord! Want to help write tons of code?! Want some good vibes? We’ll send you good vibes either way!
