Join Axiom Trade

How we think about hiring

Axiom is a small team that ships a venue with real money flowing through it 24/7. Every hire matters disproportionately and every hire goes through the same process: a real conversation, a paid trial that mirrors the actual work, and a decision made within two weeks of first contact. We do not believe in eight-round interview gauntlets; we do believe in seeing your work in conditions that resemble the job.

The work, plainly

Engineering is split roughly between the execution stack (signing, routing, MEV protection, RPC fleet management), the discovery and data stack (Pulse ingestion, analytics, the event store), and the product surface (web client, API, integrations). Design is hands-on and product-shaped; you will own surfaces end to end, not produce mockups that get re-interpreted downstream. Operations spans support, community, and incident response.

What we look for, regardless of role

Strong opinions held lightly; the willingness to be wrong in public and update fast. The ability to write — internal documents, postmortems, blog posts — clearly enough that a smart non-specialist can follow. A reflex for shipping over polishing for its own sake, and the judgment to know when polish actually matters. Real trading experience is a strong plus across every role; it is not required, but it cuts the onboarding curve in half.

What we offer

Compensation is structured as a competitive cash base plus meaningful equity. The equity is real and we share the underlying numbers during the offer stage so you can evaluate it honestly. Healthcare in supported jurisdictions, an annual learning budget, and the team's standard hardware setup are provided. The team is mostly remote with two in-person gatherings per year — one engineering-focused, one company-wide.

Working norms

Async by default, with one short daily sync and a longer weekly review. Documents over meetings; meetings only when a decision needs to be made in real time. Engineers are on a rotating on-call schedule for execution-critical systems; on-call is compensated and the load is genuinely light because we invest heavily in the systems' inherent reliability.

How to apply

Open roles are listed below with a short description of the work and the person we have in mind for it. Apply through the form on each posting and include either a portfolio (for design) or a few links to recent work (for engineering, ops, content). Cold applications for roles we have not posted are welcome through the contact form; select "Careers" and tell us what you'd do here. We read everything and reply to the applications that fit, typically within two weeks.

What happens after you apply

A short screening conversation focused on what you've built and what you want to build next. A paid trial: a real piece of work, scoped to roughly a week of part-time effort, compensated at the role's market rate. A final conversation with the team you would work with. An offer or a no, with reasoning. The whole process takes two to three weeks end to end.

A typical engineering week

A new engineer's first week is real work: a small but meaningful change to a production system, paired with the engineer who owns that system, deployed by Friday. The point is not to test you — we already decided to hire you — but to skip the unproductive interval between "joined" and "shipping" that consumes weeks at most companies.

After the first week, the rhythm settles into about half deep work on owned surfaces, a quarter on cross-cutting concerns (security reviews, infrastructure improvements, incident response), and a quarter on reviewing teammates' work. The proportions vary by role and by week; the principle that everyone contributes to all three is firm.

How decisions get made

Most decisions are made by the engineer closest to the work, with a written document for anything that affects more than one surface. Larger decisions — venue integrations, fee changes, custody model changes — go through a formal review involving the pod leads, the security function, and where relevant, the executive team. Reversals require a second document explaining what changed.

How disagreement works

Substantive technical disagreement is normal and welcomed. The norm is to write down both positions, identify the falsifiable predictions each makes, and pick a path knowing which observations would change the call. Personal disagreement is handled privately and quickly; the team is small enough that grudges metastasize fast if left alone.

Time off and rest

Vacation is taken, not just accrued. Engineers on the on-call rotation are off-call the week before and the week after vacation. Sustained overtime is treated as a process failure rather than a personal heroism; if a project requires it for more than a week, something earlier in the planning chain broke and we fix the cause rather than asking the team to absorb it.

Growth and progression

Roles broaden over time as engineers take ownership of larger surfaces. We do not run a parallel management track for the sake of it; the team's flat structure works precisely because we have not introduced management as a status reward. Engineers who want to manage do so when there's a real management need and a real interest, not because the next title requires it.

What we will not promise

We will not promise that the company will look the same in three years as it does today. Axiom is small enough that the strategy adapts to what the market is telling us, and the people we hire need to be the kind who find that energizing rather than destabilizing. The custody guarantees and the technical bar are constant; almost everything else can change.

Inclusion and culture

We hire from anywhere and accommodate any reasonable working arrangement that supports the work getting done. We expect basic professionalism, basic kindness, and a high tolerance for direct feedback delivered without theater. We do not require, perform, or police any specific cultural style beyond that.