Since I have some experience in software development, I decided to try a different door into DeFi: What do DeFi developer job listings actually require — and what can I learn from that?
Take this one, for example: Protocol Engineer at Uniswap Foundation.
Side note: ChatGPT once flattered me with, “Fantastic question — you’re thinking like a protocol designer,” when I asked something like, “So a protocol is basically a set of rules?”
Let’s skim through the requirements and see what insights we can extract.
Design, implement, and optimize Solidity-based smart contracts for Uniswap-related projects, with a focus on security, efficiency, and maintainability.
They write smart contracts in Solidity, so it really is the industry standard.
Provide technical guidance and design feedback for external developers building on Uniswap and Unichain, including hook developers and DeFi projects.
There are other DeFi projects building “on” Uniswap. Could Uniswap be viewed as some kind of marketplace, like the App Store, where smaller projects get published? Or is it more like a host platform for other projects’ smart contracts?
Explore and prototype new DeFi primitives, trading mechanisms, and smart contract architectures to expand Uniswap’s capabilities.
So they’re developing their own smart contracts — which means neither analogy above quite fits. The mention of DeFi primitives is interesting — something new and foundational. Also, what’s the distinction between trading mechanisms and smart contracts? From what I knew before, I assumed smart contracts implement trading mechanisms, so this phrasing raises questions.
Further down, there’s repeated mention of fuzz testing, security, and performance — seems like the security expectations here are a cut above the industry average. Another interesting bit is “indexers and graph traversal algorithms” — a classic technical interview topic, but it seems to be genuinely needed in practice for blockchain work. That leads me to wonder: is Solidity development often about walking trees or graphs (of blocks?) under the hood?
I could try digging into the source code of some real-world smart contracts and get a feel for how DeFi actually works… but that’s not quite a conclusion.
What I do feel is that DeFi appears to be made up of a mosaic — or maybe a loose hierarchy — of projects. Larger foundational layers like Ethereum, mid-tier platforms like Uniswap, and smaller, specialized projects all build on top of one another. Each layer uses the one above it, while also exploring very different applications of crypto tech.
Not exactly groundbreaking, I know — but it’s one more brick in the wall.