Circuit Engineer
Location
Work-from-Anywhere Policy
Employment Type
Full-Time
Department
AI Cryptography Team
Compensation
$140 - $220K USD + Equity Offers + Acceleration Options
Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in our accellerated equity plan, culture and benefits program. Equity calculators and financial education programs are included with these programs.
Benefits include, but not limited to: Comprehensive health, dental, vision and mental health coverage, retirement benefits (401K match up to 10%), and flexible PTO, together with fully funded course programs.
Why Colorpay.ai
Colorpay.ai is an Artificially Intelligent Digital Wallet, designed to improve people's lives.
Our symbiotic software combines artificial intelligence, machine learning, holographic cryptography and incentives that have been researched, developed and tested by our expert team. We've found product market fit and are scaling our team very quickly.
Some reasons to join Colorpay.ai are:
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We're on a Mission to improve life for people. These people start with our staff, their families and the people they care for. Our people are well looked after, so they build the things our world needs.
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Exceptional product market fit: We have partnered with the largest AI/ML, finance and legal providers in the world;
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Strategic investors: we've raised a large amount of seed and Series A funding from key global investors.
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World-Class Team: Colorpay.ai is hiring the best talent from DeepMind, Google, Stripe, Tesla, Figma and more.
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Partnerships: Our engineers and researchers work directly with Large Language Model providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini and Meta LLaMA 3.
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"North of Fair" compensation
Role Overview
As a Circuit Engineer on the AI / Cryptography Team at Colorpay.ai, you will own and lead projects with deep expertise in ZKP systems to build performant, low-level circuits that power our verifiable AI infrastructure. Working at the heart of our ZKML architecture, encoding machine learning computations and protocol logic into highly optimized arithmetic circuits, you will be critical to enabling scalable, privacy-preserving inference in our symbiotic environment.
As part of a world-class cryptography and systems team, you will collaborate with ZKP researchers, AI engineers, and protocol developers to push the boundaries of circuit design. You’ll own the design and implementation of novel ZK-friendly operators and efficient circuit primitives, while ensuring that complex ML workflows remain provable, succinct, and cost-efficient across modern proving systems.
What You'll Do
You’ll architect and implement zero-knowledge circuits for ML inference, model integrity proofs, and protocol verifications using frameworks such as Halo2, Plonkish, Circom, Arkworks, or gnark. This includes designing custom constraints for ZK-friendly neural network layers (e.g., ReLU approximations, convolutions, quantized matmuls), and implementing them over field arithmetic.
Responsibilities will range : constraint optimization, gate packing, range-check reductions, and adapting complex computations into efficient ZK circuits with minimal prover overhead. You’ll also build circuit testing and benchmarking frameworks, integrate circuits with recursive or zkVM-based backends, and contribute to open-source ZKML tooling and libraries.
What You Have
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3–5+ years of experience developing ZK circuits using SNARK/STARK systems (e.g. Halo2, Plonk, Groth16, STARKy, Circom, Noir, or Arkworks).
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Strong knowledge of arithmetic circuit design, including custom gate construction, constraint layering, and multiscalar optimizations.
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Deep understanding of finite field arithmetic, elliptic curves (e.g. BLS12-381, BN254), polynomial commitments, and ZKP performance tradeoffs.
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Experience implementing ZK-friendly versions of ML operations (e.g., matmul, non-linear activations, normalization layers, softmax approximations).
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Strong proficiency in Rust or C++, with a track record of contributions to low-level crypto or ZK libraries.
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Experience with recursive proof composition, proof aggregation, or integration with zkVMs and proof systems for verifiable inference.
BONUS POINTS :
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Bonus points for experience building domain-specific provers or custom proving backends optimized for ML circuits, or contributing to open-source ZKML frameworks like EZKL, Giza, or RiscZero..
Compensation Range
$140,000 - $220,000 USD
Colorpay.ai is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.
