About us
The Interchain Foundation stewards a vast ecosystem of decentralized technologies. We develop and maintain foundational protocols, and fund organizations to create an internet of shared resources, security, and value creation. Through our grants, investments, and ecosystem stewardship, we are shaping a new technological paradigm that is open-source, interoperable, and community-owned.
About the role
As Managing Director of the Interchain Foundation, you will step into the heart of a vibrant and innovative environment, using your influence and vision to guide the strategic direction and culture of our cutting-edge open-source ecosystem.
The Interchain Foundation is a dynamic organization, leveraging a distributed development environment to deliver state-of-the-art open-source software for building blockchains while fostering a thriving community of builders.
Our core mission is to support the development and adoption of the Interchain Stack. You will lead a Board of Management composed (today) of a Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer, and report to a Board of Directors. You will oversee the operations of the ICF and its subsidiaries, Interchain AG and Interchain GmbH, which together consist of 25 employees across key functions such as Finance, Marketing, Product, Developer Relations, and Operations.
In addition to our internal teams, you will collaborate closely with external development teams responsible for maintaining different components of the Interchain Stack. These teams, which we refer to as stewards, manage specific parts of the software stack such as IBC, CometBFT, the SDK, and CosmWasm, while also operating their own businesses within the crypto space.
The Interchain Foundation has an annual operating budget of approximately $40 million and a total treasury of roughly $300 million. This is an exciting opportunity for a visionary leader who thrives in innovative environments and is eager to take on the challenge of steering an impactful organization at the cutting edge. We are looking for someone with a proven ability to navigate complexity, forge strategies from diverse viewpoints and inputs, and make a significant long-term impact.
This person excels at recognizing opportunities that others may miss and securing buy-in from a wide range of stakeholders. They are committed to maximizing value for the organization and the ecosystem, knowing when to empower others and when to take the lead themselves. They understand that their legacy will be defined by creating sustainable and resilient structures.
This transformative leader will enhance good teams by recognizing and building on their strengths. Ultimately, this person is comfortable being the face of the organization, leading by example and embodying the values that will shape our culture.
Your responsibilities will be:
- With guidance and support of the Foundation Council, set the strategic direction for the Interchain Foundation, ensuring alignment with the broader goals of the ecosystem.
- Lead and manage the Interchain Foundation, executing on the strategy you set above, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and impact.
- Work within the interchain beyond the Interchain Foundation, interfacing and collaborating with diverse, distributed participants in the ecosystem and beyond.
- Cultivate and expand the interchain community, attracting developers, builders, and users.
- Drive the growth and adoption of the interchain.
- Build strong narrative and strategic alignment through public appearances — with a consistent focus on the strategy you’ve set
Ideal but not prerequisite qualifications:
- Deep experience in complex environments (dynamism of open source, and coordinating across diverse & distributed stakeholders).
- Comfortable with soft influence (not a BDFL type).
- Proven experience fostering strategic alignment with a board.
Who you are:
- Proven experience in leadership roles at an organization that successfully delivered a product to market, preferably within open-source software, or a similar environment managing multiple engineering projects in parallel with varied, complex dependencies.
- Interest (and understanding) of the crypto industry at large.
- Embody the values of free and open source software.
- Able to see the big picture and deftly understand the interplay of a complex ecosystem.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills, committed to collaboration and community engagement.
- Capable of articulating a compelling long-term vision and inspiring others to rally around it.
- Capable of making tough decisions, and knowing when and how to decide; capable of disagreeing but committing when compromise is necessary.
- Puts the mission and the team first, and oneself second.
- Located in or able to relocate to Switzerland.
Is a plus:
- Already domiciled in Switzerland, or admission to an EU country via residency.
Not sure if you're a fit? Please feel free to apply anyways, and we'll take it from there.
Interchain believes that great people come from a broad range of backgrounds, and that the diversity of our team is one of our strengths. Discriminatory behavior has no place at Interchain—we do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, gender, gender identity, national origin, age, religion, disability, or sexual orientation. We are committed to fighting bias in our workplace and our communities.
