IT Department Lead

## About Nethermind: Nethermind is a blockchain research and software engineering company building high-performance infrastructure, security tooling, and cryptographic systems across the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond. We work closely with protocol teams, L2s, and ZK projects to help design, review, and secure cutting-edge decentralized systems. We are expanding our Team and are looking for engineers with hands-on experience auditing cryptographic and zero-knowledge systems.

## Responsibilities: - Lead and supervise the full Internal IT Department: Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Security, IAM and FinOps. - Drive company-wide and team-level infrastructure initiatives, co-defining strategy and roadmap with the CIO and rest of the team. - People management across the department: staffing, career guidance, performance reviews, and raising the technical bar. - Maintain clear, consistent communication with C-level executives and group leads to strengthen cross-functional relationships and eliminate DevOps silos. - Act as the primary point of contact for all internal IT matters, staying in constant sync with the CIO on new initiatives and resource allocation. - Adapt the best of AI technology to the daily engineering and non-engineering working routine. - Communicate with external clients when required, representing the department's capabilities and aligning on infrastructure needs. - Continuously identify and implement improvements and optimisations in the way the organisation works. - Support hiring efforts: sourcing, interviewing, and evaluating candidates to grow the team with top talent. - Conduct monthly performance reviews using Rippling, providing structured feedback.

## Must Haves: - Proven experience leading and scaling IT / infrastructure / platform engineering teams (5+ years in a management role). - Strong background in cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, and DevOps/SRE practices. - Strategic thinking with the ability to co-define and execute on technical roadmaps. - Hands-on understanding of infrastructure security, IAM, and FinOps disciplines. - Experience translating compliance and audit requirements (e.g. SOC2, ISO 27001, or sector-specific frameworks) into operational controls. - Comfort owning or governing internal AI tooling and agentic workflows, with a security-first mindset. - Excellent people management skills: hiring, mentoring, career development, and performance management. - Ability to communicate complex technical topics clearly to C-level stakeholders and non-technical audiences. - Practical experience with security incident response and threat modelling, ideally including supply-chain and adversarial/state-actor scenarios. - Comfortable operating in a fully remote, async-first, globally distributed environment. - Strong organisational and prioritisation skills, able to juggle multiple initiatives and stakeholders simultaneously.

## What We Offer/ Benefits: - **Flexible Work Options**: Remote-first culture with the opportunity to work from anywhere. - **Global and Diverse Workforce:** You'll work with people from various backgrounds and cultures. - **Learning and Development**: You'll work on innovative, challenging projects and have access to experts and mentors to enhance your skills. - **Career Growth**: Access to training, mentorship, and opportunities to contribute to open-source initiatives. - **Global Events and Conferences:** Opportunities to attend the industry events. - **Collaborative and Innovative Culture:** We foster teamwork and encourage new ideas. - **Unlimited Time Off**: Enjoy the freedom to structure your working hours in a way that suits you best, with the flexibility to take unpaid time off whenever needed to maintain a healthy work-life balance. - Equity participation allowing you to benefit directly from the company's success.

Nethermind is a blockchain research and software engineering company focused on Ethereum infrastructure, protocol engineering, Layer 2 scaling, DeFi, smart contract security, and related blockchain systems. It builds core protocol solutions and provides technology, R&D, consulting, and auditing services for developers and enterprises in the blockchain ecosystem.