Research Engineer, Cryptographic Trust Infrastructure
Research Engineer, Cryptographic Trust Infrastructure
We’re ramping up for a new research project at Ink & Switch in collaboration with the Centre for Cryptographic Trust Infrastructure
AI agents increasingly negotiate and transact on behalf of people and companies, but they have no good way to check each other’s claims about the physical world. Does this carrier really have spare truck capacity on that route? Does this company’s reported supply-chain emissions cover everything it bought? Today the answer is a human auditor: slow, expensive, centralised, and it means handing over confidential data.
We’re building cryptographic trust infrastructure that lets agents verify those claims without trusted intermediaries and without revealing the underlying records. Attestations such as TLSNotary or ZK Email proofs, signed sensor data, and trusted hardware get composed into zero-knowledge proofs, and agents use those proofs to help entities reach agreements they otherwise couldn’t.
This is research, so we want to know whether it works, how well, and why. A clear negative result counts as a success. We’re focused on concrete use cases like the following:
This project is part of CCTI, and many of your collaborators will be academic technical experts who are forging ahead with the core theory. This role is about discovering and demonstrating how those ideas can plausibly be applied in real world settings. You’ll build prototypes, demonstrators, and evaluators to connect and apply research from all of the other CCTI research projects. You’ll find and close the gaps between theory and practice.
Ink & Switch is an industrial research lab. We re-imagine concepts the industry takes for granted, with a focus on our values and the experience of end-users, and we present our findings with honesty, rigor, and style.
You’ll join a small, interdisciplinary project team with deep experience in cryptography, protocol design, and how AI agents make decisions. We collaborate closely across prototype implementation, evaluation, and writing.
You’re a software engineer who likes to prototype solutions to real problems. It’s not enough to show that something is possible - you like to get feedback from authentic use and discover plausible paths to deployment and acceptance (even if your prototype isn’t the version that goes into production).
You’re familiar with programmable cryptography. You don’t need to design the cryptography yourself, but you understand how to use it correctly. You think like an attacker: you instinctively ask how a system could be abused, how a rational prover would cheat, and what a curious verifier could learn.
You favour minimalist engineering and ask what the least novel way of solving the problem is. You’re motivated by seeing research put to use, and you like testing ideas by building working software that others can try. You’re comfortable on a small research team where goals shift as we learn, and you’re someone we’d trust to carry the project forward day to day.
We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every qualification listed. These are guidelines, not hard requirements — and we know that imposter syndrome can hold talented people back. If this role excites you, we want to hear from you!
Bonus points for:
Email jobs@inkandswitch.com with a short summary of your experience, links to any previous work you’d like to share, and why you’re interested in this project.