Distributed Systems Engineer

Pluralis Research is pioneering Protocol Learning — a fully decentralised way to train and deploy AI models that opens this layer to individuals rather than well resourced corporates. By pooling compute from many participants, incentivising their efforts, and preventing any single party from controlling a model’s full weights, we’re creating a genuinely open, collaborative path to frontier-scale AI. If you want your work to shape the future of truly open innovation in artificial intelligence, join us. Key Responsibilities • High-Performance Networking: Optimise P2P connections, minimise latency, and ensure that data flows efficiently under real-world bandwidth constraints. • Scalability & Reliability: Design for fault tolerance in a multi-participant training environment. Build robust mechanisms to handle node failures and network disruptions without interrupting end-to-end learning. • Collaboration: Work closely with the AI team to merge cutting-edge research with large-scale distributed systems. Contribute to shared libraries, frameworks, and open-source projects. • Security & Privacy: Implement best practices for encryption, authentication, and node identity. Protect model shards to guarantee that no single party can fully reconstruct the model’s weights. • Continuous Improvement: Profile system bottlenecks, propose and implement performance optimisations, and keep our technology stack ahead of emerging standards in decentralised computing. What We’re Looking For • Distributed Systems Mastery: Deep experience building and operating high-throughput, fault-tolerant systems at scale. • Python Proficiency: Strong proficiency in Python, with experience writing clean, maintainable, production-quality code • Network & Protocol Expertise: Solid understanding of peer-to-peer topologies, routing, and messaging frameworks. • Hands-on Engineering: Comfortable with the full software lifecycle—architecture, coding, testing, deployment, and maintenance. • Open-Source Enthusiasm: Passion for collaborative development and an interest in reshaping AI infrastructure for global accessibility. • Bonus: Familiarity with crypto/blockchain frameworks, decentralised consensus algorithms, or large-scale ML pipelines. Compensation & Benefits • Equity-Heavy Package: We offer meaningful ownership or token allocations for key technical contributors. • Competitive Base: Pluralis is hiring the best. • Visa Sponsorship: Optional full visa sponsorship and relocation support to either US or Australia. • Remote-First Culture: Flexible work environment with team members distributed in Australia and the United States. This is a full-time, remote position with the opportunity to collaborate with the team in person on a quarterly basis. • Cutting-Edge Domain: Work at the intersection of AI and decentralised systems, tackling some of the most challenging engineering problems in what is about to be one of the largest intersections of two previously non-overlapping fields ever. FYI’s • We only hire in Australia and the United States. Visa sponsorship is limited to these countries. • Applicants must have professional-level English proficiency (written and spoken). • Pluralis is a remote team across Australia and the US. You’ll need to be comfortable working across timezones and collaborating with a diverse, distributed group. • Recruiters: we aren’t looking for agency support at this time. We’ll reach out if we need help. Backed by Union Square Ventures and other tier-1 investors, we’re a world-class, deeply technical team of ML researchers. Pluralis is unapologetically ideological. We view the world as a better place if we are able to implement what we are attempting, and Protocol Learning as the only plausible approach to preventing a handful of massive corporations monopolising model development, access and release, and achieving massive economic capture. If this resonates, please apply. Apply tot his job