What attracted me to Kraken was my interest in Bitcoin and I had a great opportunity to join right as the bull market of 2021 was getting started. I was first introduced to Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2017 and had been following it for quite sometime. By the time I started at Kraken I was already running my own node and my interest in the space was at an all-time high.
But the thing about Kraken is that they're an exchange so, they don't do a ton of open source work (and most crypto protocols are open-source). However, when they announced that they would be funding someone to work on the open-source Rust Bitcoin library I got really excited to support that initiative.
During this effort I partnered with industry veterans like Pierre Rochard, Pete Rizzo, and Andrew Poelstra to source and hire the right prospective candidate. This was a unique search for me because I had never hired anyone for open-source work that would be completely unaffiliated with the company. I'm extremely proud to have worked on this because it's not everyday that a non-developer has an opportunity to make a contribution to the Bitcoin network.
Kraken made an announcement about the hire in this blog post.
