General Manager, IPFS Implementations

About Protocol Labs

Protocol Labs is a network of over 450 open-source teams, projects, and organizations.  These teams are focused on researching, developing, and deploying network protocols with a common goal to drive breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. The Protocol Labs Network is fully decentralized and comprises many projects building on top of network native technologies, such as IPFS, IPLD, Filecoin, and libp2p.

Key Summary

Steward team strategy, cross-project relationships, and funding for critical implementations and tools in the IPFS ecosystem like Kubo, Boxo, Helia, Desktop, Companion, the ipfs.io HTTP gateway, and probelab.io.  You are both the “captain” charting the course and “ground control” responsible for the team’s funding and operations.

About IPFS

IPFS is making the web work peer to peer with content addressing so content can be verified independent of the provider or transport method.  IPFS is a collection protocols with corresponding specs, which has cultivated an ecosystem of products and projects across data persistence, content delivery, ML, and more.  Similarly, a community of working groups and various protocol implementations have emerged.  IPFS implementations are now running on hundreds of thousands of publicly detected nodes (not to mention the unmeasured use cases) across a wide range of runtimes from popular command line tools and browsers (both natively and via extension) to space.  

About this IPFS implementation team

We are currently composed primarily of engineers, researchers, and engineering managers who have been around the project for years and are deeply committed to IPFS architectural principles and the ways content addressable data can better the world.  We are at the heart of helping IPFS establish a “big tent” with stewarding the projects above and IPFS specs.  We are engaging on the next phase in our journey by forging a new entity with diversified funding.  We will stay committed to working in the open, especially through working groups like IPFS Implementations and IPFS Ecosystem, and making an exceptional team of IPFS implementers.  

As the founding product lead for IPFS implementations, you will… 

• Identify relevant market gaps or business opportunities across IPFS, web3, and larger web2 ecosystems.
• Build a corresponding strategy for value-creating opportunities around IPFS implementations with quantitative and qualitative data.
• Communicate the vision and big picture in an inspiring way.
• Represent the impact of our projects to funding sources to secure additional funding.
• Establish strong relationships around the world with IPFS app developers, other IPFS implementations, and IPFS infrastructure operators, ultimately attracting them to build using our products.
• Drive and collect user research, serving as “the voice of the customer/community” for the dev team and clearly answering “the why”.
• Organize and/or present in online and physical events with the rest of the IPFS community where you’ll source, distill, and tell stories that bring our technology to life.
• Drive communications around our implementations and offering. Develop and deploy documentation, websites, explainers, and other support and marketing materials to facilitate newcomers joining the community.
• Craft the onboarding and engagement strategy for newcomers to our tools and use a data-driven approach to iterate and improve their experience. Create and monitor metrics to monitor how the initiative achieves product-market fit.
• Contribute your leadership  to making it an exceptional high-functioning team through your own modeling and insistence.
• Work and influence in the open in a hospitable manner.  Through it all -- the tactical and strategic work -- our warmth and thoughtfulness is needed to maintain welcoming spaces for our community.

You may be a fit for this role if you have…

• Strong product management skills. You’ve led world-class developer products, designed and executed major upgrades, and most importantly ensured the work delivered impact by working closely with users.
• Startup flexibility with a generalist “founder” skillset and experience running your own startup or high-growth organization, or high-level early-stage roles in such a setting.  You’re joining a vibrant IPFS ecosystem and the large Protocol Labs Network, but we’re not a large company.  As the product leader in a group composed of engineers, there will undoubtedly be product and business related gaps you’ll fill until we outsource or hire.  
• A pulse on where new technology innovation and adoption is happening - and how to chart a product to meet it. Created and executed product strategy and roadmaps for highly technical endeavors, balancing input across user needs, engineering teams, and stakeholders to maximize engineering team impact.
• Self-starter mentality, problem solving acumen, and the drive and ability to lift new projects single-handedly.
• Experience securing funding for open source projects, whether through grants, open source business models, donation-based foundation-style structures, or more modern web3 public funding mechanisms.  
• A passion for building a better web and creating open source communities. You’ve worked with or led large open source projects, including communicating with developers in channels like GitHub and participating in open source governance and protocol improvement processes.
• Intellectual curiosity and technical depth in content addressing / peer to peer web protocols.  You can dive deep on the inner workings of IPFS architectural pieces and how they relate, and think through the product-level tradeoffs and use cases to prioritize.  If you do not have any experience with IPFS, libp2p, or related technologies, you can quickly get up to speed and develop that expertise while working hand-in-hand with protocol engineers.
• Experience working across different countries, cultures, and timezones. You keenly understand different developers’ and users’ needs, wills, and cultures. They should love interacting with you and hearing from you, and you should have a genuine concern for their growth and success.

Bonus points…

• Built scalable programs for developer communities, which increased the quantity and quality of community contributions.
• Coordinated large events and conferences in the past.
• Managed community grant or sponsorship processes.
• Background in software engineering.
• Experience forging collaborations and organically growing solid ecosystems and communities.
• Professional experience in data science and analytics.
• Experience with web3 communities.
• Established relational network within web3.
• Previous experience with the Protocol Labs ecosystem (e.g., Filecoin, IPFS, libp2p).

When applying…

We’d love to hear why you’re interested in this role and what possibilities you see for IPFS in the future!

The expected base pay for this position ranges from $225,000 to $275,000.

#LI-Remote

#LI-JM1