Blockchain / Backend Engineer — RealityFoundation

About RealityFoundation

RealityFoundation is a non-profit, based in Brussels, building the authenticity layer for digital media.

We certify photos and videos at the moment of capture. The raw media and its metadata are hashed, signed, and anchored to a public blockchain before anything can touch them — so a media record can be proven authentic, not merely believed. Our work is open source, built on the C2PA standard, and runs on infrastructure Europe controls.

We do this because the alternative is already arriving. Once synthetic media is indistinguishable from real media, everything unproven becomes deniable — insurance claims, court evidence, journalism, public accountability. Detection is a losing race: it will always be one model behind. Provenance at the origin is the only thing that holds.

We are small, early, and public about our work. The people who join now decide what this becomes.

Must-have technical skills

Solid experience with Bitcoin blockchain workflows and OpenTimestamps-based anchoring
Hands-on experience building and maintaining cryptographic hashing pipelines
Familiarity with IPFS and decentralized storage workflows
Backend development proficiency (Go, Rust, or Python preferred)
Experience designing and maintaining REST or gRPC APIs
Understanding of C2PA or related content provenance standards is a plus

What you bring

You care about technical correctness and do not like shipping systems you do not fully understand
You can work autonomously in an early-stage environment with incomplete specs and high ambiguity
You communicate clearly with non-technical teammates and explain trade-offs in plain language
You share our belief that media integrity is a public good worth protecting

What you’ll do

Own the end-to-end hashing and certification pipeline from media capture to Bitcoin/OpenTimestamps record
Design and implement IPFS-based storage architecture for certified media
Build and maintain backend infrastructure that connects capture clients to the certification layer
Contribute to the open-source codebase and document architecture decisions clearly
Work closely with security and product to keep the pipeline correct, auditable, and resilient

What we offer

€35,000 – €55,000 / year gross on a Belgian permanent contract. We publish the band because you should not have to negotiate blind

Brussels or remote Our base is Brussels, and we can hire anywhere in the EU. We also bring the team together 2 times a year, on us

Tools and learning budget A real budget for equipment, training, and relevant conferences

Your work is public What you build here stays in the open, under your name

Growth, impact, and ownership You can grow into the role and shape how it evolves, while working with a small dynamic team on a mission that protects trust in digital media and lets you be part of meaningful change

The selection process

Four steps, about three weeks. You will know where you stand at every one of them.

Application review A person reads it — no model screens you out. You hear back within 7 working days either way

Intro call (30 minutes) With the founding team. What you want, what we're building, whether the shapes match

Working session You get a simplified media-to-certificate flow plus a reliability incident, then walk us through the changes you would make and why in a practical session

Team call (45 minutes) With the people you'd actually work with, then references

Decision within 7 working days of the last step. If it's a no, we tell you why. We know that's rare. It shouldn't be.