Cryptographer

We're Tropic Square, a Prague-based company designing open, auditable secure-element chips.

We're looking for a Cryptographer to join our hybrid team and help shape the security foundations of a long-term, open-source project in the semiconductor world. You'll sit between cryptographic research and real silicon: choosing and specifying the schemes that go into our chips, and making sure they survive contact with hardware, physics, and an attacker with the device in hand.

If you're excited by deep technical problems with real-world impact, this might be the role for you.

👉 What You'll Work On

• Acting as the bridge between the abstract mathematical world of cryptography and the practical world of hardware and software engineering
• Tracking the latest trends in cryptography, analyzing research papers, and translating complex concepts into actionable insights for the engineering team
• Helping develop secure architectures and cryptographic protocols for our next-generation secure-element chips
• Designing algorithmic countermeasures against side-channel and fault-injection attacks for schemes like ECC, lattice-based cryptography, and others
• Attending cryptography workshops and conferences to stay in touch with the research community and the latest research

👌 Our Stack

• Bare-metal C and assembly on the chip, Python (and SageMath or similar) for modelling, prototyping, and test vectors
• Public specifications, reference implementations, and open review — check out our GitHub

💪 About You

• You have a strong academic background in Cryptography, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related field
• You have a deep understanding of standard cryptographic schemes (ECC, RSA, AES, SHA) and are familiar with the new NIST PQC standards (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA)
• You are highly comfortable reading, evaluating, and implementing cryptography research papers and standard specifications
• You have theoretical knowledge of physical attacks (SCA/FI) and mitigation strategies. Hands-on laboratory experience is a strong plus
• You are proficient in C and understand the unique constraints of embedded software development (we program in bare-metal C and assembly)
• Experience with hardware architectures is a huge plus, but not required — we will teach you
• You are a strong communicator who enjoys mentoring and breaking down highly technical cryptographic standards for HW/SW engineers

🤝 Why Join Tropic Square

• A rare role where cryptographic theory meets hardware reality — your design decisions end up in silicon, not in a slide deck
• Direct, visible impact on an auditable secure element built and reviewed in public
• Time and budget for conferences, workshops, and keeping your research connections alive
• Hybrid by default: work from the Prague office, remotely, or mix the two, whichever fits your life. We optimize for autonomy and deep focus
• In-person team meetups in Prague are held a few times a year for planning and architecture work

👋 Interested? We want to hear from you! Just submit your CV, a brief cover letter, and links to your work (papers, code, talks). After the initial screening, you'll be directly in touch with your future team.