About Sherlock

Sherlock believes that a sound currency and functioning financial system should be basic human rights. Sherlock’s mission is to help create an open, uncensorable financial system that is secure enough for billions of people to trust with their life savings.

Smart contract auditing is a good start, but it’s not enough. That's why Sherlock provides protocols with state-of-the-art, incentive-aligned audit contests as well as on-chain bug bounty and smart contract exploit coverage.

Sherlock is the only audit provider to offer a "best of both worlds" solution to auditing, as well as back audits with up to $2M in smart contract exploit coverage.

The best of both worlds approach combines traditional auditing (reserving 1-2 highly talented security experts) with an audit contest approach that gets hundreds of eyes on a codebase and surfaces things that teams of 2-4 can just never find.

And Sherlock is the only auditor to offer smart contract exploit coverage behind each audit. If activated, it means Sherlock can pay out up to 2M USDC if the contracts Sherlock audited get hacked. Sherlock also includes a 200k USDC bug bounty on any covered contracts (with ability to go higher). No other security player has more incentive alignment than Sherlock.

Sherlock has done more smart contract audits than nearly anyone else since launching audit contests in September 2022. Repeat customers include Optimism, GMX, Ajna, Gitcoin, Index Coop, Opyn, Notional, OlympusDAO, Lyra, Perennial and many more.

And Sherlock is currently protecting ~$12M of funds on-chain right now for 11 protocols through the on-chain smart contract coverage protocol that Sherlock launched on Ethereum.

Join Sherlock's elite team at the ground floor, backed by some of the leading Silicon Valley and crypto venture capitalists including IDEO, Archtype, Dragonfly Ventures, Spartan, A Capital, Scalar Capital, DeFi Alliance, GSR, Coinfund, LedgerPrime, and Synthetix founder Kain Warwick.

Sherlock's Culture

Sherlock's culture is fast-moving, intense, and not right for everyone. To excel on this team, you must:

• Be mission-focused. Anyone who is in this for reasons other than creating the best worldwide financial system in history will either get too demotivated to last through multi-year bear markets or get too distracted during the frothy "up only" bull markets.
• Be willing to work long, hard and smart. If Sherlock has any advantage, it is the willingness to work harder and think with more discipline than anyone else. This includes thinking from first principles about all important decisions and always thinking in tradeoffs and bets.
• Be an owner. You will get ownership in Sherlock after a short time in this role, so you will be expected to act like you are the owner of a Michelin-star restaurant where no effort or detail is too small for you.
• Be a builder. Everyone at Sherlock is deep in the arena and we are reminded of that every day by the people who sit in the stands (on Twitter or elsewhere) and criticize. There are no "idea people" or managers at Sherlock; everyone is in execution mode first and foremost and gets their hands dirty.
• Be a customer at all times. The customer is always right and if the customer makes a mistake, it is Sherlock's fault for not making the rules, UI or UX, etc. effective enough. It is too easy to sit behind a computer and build in an echo chamber, so we must experience the customer's viewpoint as often as possible.
• Be a professional athlete. Professional athletes opt in to a high-performance, meritocratic culture. This creates an environment that brings out the best in people and rewards each for their respective performance. But it's also an environment where being in the 70th percentile in your role means you will have a short tenure on the team.
• You thrive in a direct, transparent environment. You must be comfortable giving direct feedback to others and receiving direct feedback yourself. "Not ruffling feathers" comes at the expense of moving in a suboptimal direction for too long. Sherlock is extremely transparent internally (and with customers) which means you can get involved in decisions made in any part of Sherlock.

The Role

Sherlock is lucky to be in a place where its auditing services are likely the best in the entire crypto industry. Sherlock regularly finds vulnerabilities that top teams miss and is almost never found in a situation where the reverse happens. And Sherlock is the only auditor willing to repay millions of dollars in the case of a missed exploit. The Sherlock team is working every day to improve the product and make this gap even wider. See this link for a breakdown of why Sherlock audits are superior: https://docs.sherlock.xyz/audits/protocols

However, Sherlock's superior performance is not widely known. This is where Sherlock needs your help.

For the past 12 months, Sherlock has done more audits than nearly any other auditor (~100). But the vast majority of these audits have come to Sherlock from word of mouth and repeat customers. This is incredible, but it means that there are vast swaths of the ecosystem that still have never heard of Sherlock or don't know why Sherlock is superior to other auditors. Every time a high-quality crypto project chooses an inferior auditor (instead of Sherlock) it holds the space back from its full potential and puts the life savings of end users at risk. If you're serious about applying for this job and you've read this far, please email jack at sherlock dot xyz with 4-sentence answers to these three questions: How would you pitch Sherlock over a more traditional audit provider? Why will you be able to get connected to the best protocol teams in crypto? Why should Sherlock select you over hundreds of other applicants?

Your role is simple:

Build relationships with high-quality protocol teams in crypto and convey the superiority of Sherlock audits to them.

Of course, in practice this job involves a lot of skills.

You'll need to understand the fine points of smart contract development so that you can put yourself in the shoes of dev teams that are navigating audit providers and shipping to mainnet.

You'll need to understand all of the tradeoffs involved in different approaches to smart contract audits, as well as the immense difficulties involved in finding vulnerabilities. Solidity experience is a huge plus.

You'll need to be very skilled at both speaking and writing: Sherlock makes important decisions and weighs tradeoffs exclusively in written communication, but most protocol teams want to see a face and hear a voice before choosing an auditor.

You'll need to find ways to get connected to high-level decision makers at the biggest protocols (and chains) in crypto and you'll need to be comfortable having in-depth discussions with them.

With that in mind, the day-to-day responsibilities of this role likely include:

• Building relationships with protocol/chain teams and helping them decide to choose Sherlock audits (10x weight)
• Building relationships with ecosystem teams and other parties to make sure Sherlock is a preferred partner for their ecosystem/collective (2x weight)
• Working to onboard protocol teams to Sherlock bug bounty and smart contract coverage once the audit phase is complete (1x weight)
• Building out marketing/social media capabilities where relevant in order to get more inbound/attention for Sherlock (1x weight)
• Being ready to wear a completely different hat on any given day to help Sherlock succeed (variable weight)

Requirements

• Must have an edge in getting connected to decision makers at high-quality protocol teams
• Must be competitive and driven to succeed in bringing customers to Sherlock
• Must have a strong belief in the future potential of crypto
• Must be deep enough in crypto/engineering/auditing to converse at length with prospective customers
• Must understand and share the cultural values of Sherlock listed in "Sherlock's Culture" above

Nice to Haves

• Proficiency in Solidity/Python
• Proficiency in Solidity smart contract security

What's in it for you

• Attractive package base + tokens. While the base salary will be competitive, Sherlock prides itself on above-market token compensation, giving you a large stake in Sherlock’s long-term success. Note: This role can be set up like a traditional contributor (base USD salary + tokens) or it can be set up in a more sales-incentivized manner with OTE and a commission/base split. It probably warrants a conversation or two to find the best setup for you.
• Flexible time-off policy
• Fully remote and flexible workstyle gives you the autonomy to live and work how you want
• Optional access to shared working space at your local WeWork or equivalent
• Great healthcare including dental
• Multiple offsites each year in places like France, Colombia, Portugal, etc.
• Root access to the decision-making process/criteria in all areas of Sherlock and working directly with the founders
• Move quickly and get stuff done on a small, elite team that is already making a big impact in the crypto space
• Play a huge role in defining the future of Sherlock and accomplishing the goal of making crypto/DeFi accessible to everyone

P.S. There are a lot of possibilities for what the title of a role like this could be. Happy to work with you to choose a title that you are comfortable with.