Chief Architect

What is Outercore? ()

In the famous words of Colin Evran and other leaders on the team…Outercore is how web3 systems and ecosystems scale
The way we accomplish this is through startup and venture funding, developer relationships, events and hackathons, general advice, integrations and software, services, open source, and anything that helps developers use Filecoin to solve real problems
Outercore also has engineering teams with some of the original architects and engineers of the Filecoin Network, including the creator of the working implementation of Filecoin, Lotus
Outercore seeks to see the long-term growth of the decentralized web
We try to advocate the proper use of PLN (Protocol Labs Network) technologies
This means we encourage businesses, companies, and individuals to make use of PL (Protocol Labs Network) technology by providing whatever we can

Why is Outercore hiring a Chief Architect?

Large scale coordination of work requires a leader to be at the center of it all
This is to ensure the group is moving in the correct direction technically
This leader needs to be the conduit between the engineering teams, the general public, and the stakeholders of the Filecoin Network
 

At a macro level, our future Chief Architect must be able to make the few but crucial strategic technical decisions that will steer the Filecoin Network in the right direction
This is missing in our group today

The risk of not having this individual in our organization is unacceptable
Our teams currently run the risk of behaviors that typically occur when a group is isolated from the broader ecosystem
Examples of this include but are not limited to:

• Engineers who don’t know how to communicate their needs may never get the help they need to scale their teams and become bottlenecks for the development of Filecoin
  
• Cross team communication can become non-existent in the Protocol Labs Network
  
• Cross team communication between portfolio companies that Outercore has invested in can become non-existent
  
• Unintentional overlap of projects and wasted engineering effort
  

These instances could lead to the lack of coordination capability to solve problems at scale
 

To get ahead of these problems (and many more), we’re hiring a Chief Architect for Outercore
The Chief Architect’s involvement and ability to make useful decisions will improve overall engineering team health, net productivity, and increase the probability of real progress Filecoin needs more of

What is the role of the Chief Architect on the Outercore team?

Outercore needs a leader who can direct the creation of formalized solutions to business problems and opportunities
This is very useful for those who wish to use Filecoin, IPFS, and other associated technologies in production

Here are some high level topics the Outercore Chief Architect will immediately be involved in

• Storage provider tooling currently serves the most important cohort of users for the Filecoin Network
  Without healthy and happy storage providers the network will not function
  
• Outercore has invested in a ton of companies that need guidance on how to use Filecoin, many of them are finding difficulty in using our stack
  
• Teams responsible for the development of our storage stack need to know what the most important things are to work on
  They also need to know what is actually possible from a technical perspective so they don’t waste cycles pursuing impossible tasks
  
• Supporting teams in the Protocol Labs Network would benefit from an omnipresent leader who can help everyone understand the best way to assist technical teams
  
• Everyone should know who they need to talk to for issues related to the development of the Filecoin Network
  

What are the responsibilities of our new Chief Architect?

The Outercore Chief Architect will represent Outercore’s end of the bargain for helping Filecoin achieve its highest potential in the world
They should be amongst the most convicted to achieve this vision

• Become a leader for the development and deployments of IPFS & Filecoin technology, products like Estuary, and new technologies within our ecosystem
  
• Rise to appropriate challenges both strategically and tactically as they come up
  Developing a decentralized storage network of this size has never been done before and unpredictable things will happen
  
• Have an in-depth knowledge of Filecoin economics and how to develop economics with an ever changing global economy
  
• Help steer the organization towards improved market penetration and assist in the adoption of new tools
  
• Monitor social and technology trends and get ahead of the market while pushing IPFS & Filecoin on top of the market
  
• Identify opportunities and risks for Outercore
  
• Participate in management decisions
  
• Participate in staffing decisions
  
• Monitor budget and forecast costs
  
• Support technical recruitment, retention, acquisition, and capital allocation efforts of Outercore
  
• Be an outstanding communicator of the technology strategy we have to partners, management, investors and employees
  
• Research, outline, and direct the most effective solutions for our technology
  
• Architect new technologies for the companies that Outercore has invested in
  
• Handle government, FINRA, SEC, and state technology, security and privacy related audits
  
• Acquisitions and technology integrations
  Be responsible for the due diligence, evaluation and reporting
  
• Develop technical business plans
  

TLDR, what is the overview?

• Set technical vision and strategy
• Grow a killer engineering team
• Develop an organization and people
• Drive and ship great software
• Communicate, communicate, communicate

Who is this person?

Believing in the value of decentralized storage networks and having a deep understanding of storage technologies would be the starting point

• They love Filecoin or they think they might!
• Our next Chief Architect should enjoy doing things that haven’t been done before
  
• Making great decisions and being productive should come naturally to our next Chief Architect
  
• Someone who is not afraid of inventing when necessary
  Filecoin launched because a couple of ICs solved problems that no one thought could be solved
  That same ability should be represented in our Chief Architect
  
• C-level experience is not required but knowing how to communicate at that level is very useful
  
• Experience with at least 3 companies
  Our future Chief Architect should have been leading technical decisions at those companies that had impact on the markets, the technical personnel, and stakeholders of the technology
  
• A large network and engineering toolbelt for solving large problems in this domain
  This person should have more solutions than questions
  
• This person should have evaluated many large technical solutions and achieved significant successes in the deployment of those solutions
  
• Someone who has worked on technology that has had high stakes who can understand how difficult the situation is for Storage Providers today
  
• Very comfortable when doing due diligence, audits, and evaluations of anything technical