Why I Chose to Join Startale as a Blockchain Engineer

Some engineers chase novelty. Others chase impact.

After nearly two decades building infrastructure—from Web2 payment systems to the heart of decentralized protocols—I've come to value one thing above all: durability. Not just in code, but in mission, team, and execution.

That’s why I joined Startale.

A Career Rooted in Systems Thinking

I earned my master’s degree in applied mathematics and cybernetics almost 20 years ago, and that background still shapes how I approach engineering today: rigorously, deterministically, and always with edge cases in mind.

Over the years, I’ve moved between large-scale financial systems and nimble startups, building both open-source and proprietary solutions. In Web2, I focused heavily on payment infrastructure, where latency and fault tolerance are critical. Later, I joined Parity Technologies and contributed to the Parity Ethereum client, and eventually Polkadot. That’s where I fully stepped into the world of decentralized systems, protocol design, and the subtle art of building resilient networks with no central fallback.

Kraken came next. While it operated more like a Web2 company, it offered a front-row seat to real-world crypto usage—millions of users, high availability systems, compliance constraints, and operational scale. But what I was still looking for was a place that combined deep technical ambition with long-term purpose.

Finding a Mission That Actually Matters

When I first heard about Startale, I didn’t know much about the company. It wasn’t dominating headlines or driving hype cycles. But the more I looked into it, the more it stood out.

This was the team behind Astar, and more recently, Soneium. I remembered seeing Astar back when I was at Parity—a project that didn’t overpromise but kept delivering.

What struck me most was how Startale operates differently from many web3 startups. Instead of chasing token liquidity before product-market fit, they’re building sustainable business models, supported by distribution channels and actual users. There's a focus on building something the world will use—not just speculate on.

That’s rare. And it’s what ultimately pulled me in.

A Culture That Feels Different (Because It Is)

Startale’s culture surprised me. It blends the best of web3—ownership, speed, ambition—with a kind of clarity and calm that’s hard to describe until you experience it.

Transparency isn’t just a value here; it’s the default. Financials, hiring, strategy—they’re discussed openly. You won’t find decisions hidden in DMs or private calls. Everyone’s expected to have context and contribute.

There’s also a distinctly Japanese ethos to how the team operates: grounded, honest, quietly determined. People care. Not just about what they’re building, but about each other.

That makes all the difference when you're solving hard problems.

What We’re Building—and Why It’s Hard

At Startale, I work on protocol infrastructure that aims to support global adoption. That means tackling problems of performance, scalability, and developer experience at a level that’s anything but solved.

A lot of engineering today revolves around refining what's already known. But at Startale, we're navigating uncharted territory every day. We’re not here to just implement consensus algorithms or build yet another rollup. We’re setting new benchmarks for what production-grade, user-friendly infrastructure must look like—at the scale of billions of users. And that’s not hyperbole. Our mission is to make web3 accessible for billions of people, and everything we build is measured against that bar.

It’s high-stakes engineering—and exactly the kind of challenge I was looking for.

When It All Clicked

There was one moment, early on, that really stuck with me.

We were on a team workation, and my team was doing our first internal demo. The product was still rough—no polish, no UI magic. But it worked. After months of pushing through specs, tests, edge cases, and architecture debates, we ran the demo and hit the happy path.

That moment—watching it run, feeling the quiet pride in the room—reminded me why I joined. We’re not chasing hype. We’re building something that works. And doing it together.

A Word to Fellow Engineers

If you’re the kind of engineer who thrives on ambiguity and cares about code quality and long-term adoption, Startale is worth a look.

This isn’t a company chasing vaporware. It’s a team of deeply capable people, building infrastructure that could underpin the next decade of onchain activity. The work is hard, but the mission is real.

And if you’ve been waiting to feel proud of what you're building again, maybe this is your place too.

Startale is looking for Rust Blockchain Protocol Engineers!

🔗 You can find the details here.