Phantom is the crypto wallet that people actually enjoy using. In an industry where most wallet experiences range from confusing to hostile, Phantom built something that feels polished, fast, and intuitive — and more than 10 million monthly active users have noticed. What started as a Solana-only wallet has expanded to support Ethereum, Polygon, Bitcoin, and Base, making Phantom one of the most widely used multi-chain wallets in the entire crypto ecosystem.
The company behind the wallet is small — roughly 50 people — which means that a remarkably compact team is responsible for a product used by millions. If you are evaluating Phantom as a place to work, that ratio tells you most of what you need to know about the culture: high-caliber people, significant individual impact, and very selective hiring.
What Phantom Actually Builds
Phantom is a self-custody crypto wallet available as a browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge) and as a mobile app (iOS and Android). It lets users store, send, receive, and swap tokens; interact with decentralized applications; stake assets; and manage NFT collections — all from a single interface.
The key product components include:
- Multi-chain wallet — A unified interface for managing assets across Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, Bitcoin, and Base. Each chain has fundamentally different transaction models, signing schemes, and address formats, and Phantom abstracts all of that complexity behind a consistent UX
- In-app swap — A built-in token swap feature powered by aggregated DEX liquidity. Users can swap tokens directly within the wallet without navigating to a separate exchange
- Staking — Native staking support for Solana and Ethereum, allowing users to earn rewards without leaving the wallet
- NFT gallery — A visual interface for browsing, managing, and sending NFTs. Phantom was one of the first wallets to make NFTs a first-class citizen in the wallet experience
- dApp browser — A built-in browser (mobile) and extension interface that connects to decentralized applications, handling transaction signing and permission management
- Transaction simulation — A security feature that previews what a transaction will do before you sign it, helping users avoid phishing attacks and malicious contracts
What sets Phantom apart technically is not any single feature but the execution quality across all of them. The wallet is fast — transactions confirm quickly, the UI responds instantly, and the overall experience feels closer to a well-built fintech app than a typical crypto tool. This polish is not accidental; it is the result of a product-driven engineering culture that treats UX as a first-class engineering concern.
Phantom raised a Series C at a $1.2 billion valuation in 2024, with investors including Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and a16z crypto. The company generates revenue through swap fees and has a sustainable business model that does not depend on token issuance.
Engineering Culture
Phantom's engineering culture is product-obsessed and quality-driven. The team is small enough that every engineer's work is directly visible in the product that millions of people use daily. There are no layers of management between the engineers and the product — feedback loops are short, and the connection between writing code and seeing users interact with it is immediate.
The company operates with a startup mentality, but a mature one. Phantom has been around since 2021 and has shipped consistently through bull and bear markets without the wild hiring and layoff cycles that plagued much of the industry. The team grew carefully, and the preference has always been to stay small and hire exceptionally well rather than scale headcount aggressively.
Engineering is organized into small teams focused on specific platforms and product areas: mobile (iOS and Android), browser extension, blockchain integration, security, and infrastructure. Given the team size, engineers frequently work across boundaries. A mobile engineer might contribute to the extension; a blockchain engineer might shape product decisions about how a new chain integration surfaces in the UI.
Phantom is based in San Francisco but operates with significant remote flexibility. The core team maintains a strong in-person presence in SF, and the company values co-location for the speed it enables, but remote engineers are well-integrated into the team. The culture is low-ego and engineering-driven — the kind of environment where the best argument wins regardless of who makes it.
What Roles They Hire For
Phantom hires very selectively. With roughly 50 people and a preference for staying lean, open positions are rare and competitive. When they do hire, the roles reflect the product's multi-platform, multi-chain nature.
Engineering:
- Mobile engineers (React Native, with native iOS/Swift and Android/Kotlin for performance-critical components)
- Browser extension engineers (TypeScript, browser APIs, extension architecture)
- Blockchain engineers (multi-chain integration, transaction construction, signing for Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and others)
- Rust engineers (core wallet logic, cryptographic operations, performance-critical shared code)
- Infrastructure engineers (backend services, API infrastructure, real-time data)
- Security engineers (transaction simulation, phishing detection, smart contract analysis)
Product & Design:
- Product designers (UX across mobile and extension, design systems, interaction design)
- Product managers (rare at this team size, but critical for prioritization across chains and platforms)
Business:
- Business development (dApp partnerships, chain ecosystem relationships)
- Marketing and community (social media, content, developer relations)
The mobile engineering and Rust roles are particularly distinctive at Phantom. The mobile wallet experience is core to Phantom's competitive advantage, and the team invests heavily in making it feel native and performant on both iOS and Android. Rust is used for shared core logic that runs across platforms — a cross-platform approach that gives Phantom the ability to maintain consistency between the extension and mobile apps without duplicating code.
Tech Stack
Phantom's stack reflects its multi-platform, multi-chain product:
- Mobile: React Native as the primary framework, with native modules in Swift (iOS) and Kotlin (Android) for performance-critical features like biometric authentication, secure key storage, and smooth animations
- Browser extension: TypeScript for the extension architecture, with a shared component library for UI consistency across platforms
- Core wallet logic: Rust for cryptographic operations, key management, transaction construction, and shared business logic. Compiled to WebAssembly for the browser extension and native binaries for mobile
- Blockchain integration: Chain-specific libraries — @solana/web3.js, ethers.js, custom Bitcoin integration layers. Each chain requires its own transaction construction, signing, and address derivation logic
- Backend: TypeScript and Node.js for API services. Real-time price feeds, token metadata, NFT indexing, and transaction history aggregation
- Infrastructure: AWS, with an emphasis on low-latency API responses for real-time wallet data
The Rust-based core is the most architecturally interesting aspect of Phantom's stack. By implementing key wallet logic in Rust and compiling it to different targets, Phantom achieves cross-platform consistency without the compromises of a pure JavaScript or pure native approach. If you are a Rust engineer interested in applied cryptography and cross-platform development, this is one of the most compelling applications of the language in the crypto space.
Interview Process
Phantom's interview process is rigorous, reflecting the selectivity of a 50-person company hiring at high standards. Expect 4-5 rounds over 2-4 weeks:
- Recruiter/hiring manager screen (30-45 min) — Background, product intuition, and motivation. Phantom cares deeply about whether candidates are genuine users who understand the product. Download the wallet, use it, and come with opinions
- Technical screen (60 min) — Platform-specific coding challenge. Mobile candidates may build a React Native component. Extension candidates may work on a TypeScript challenge. Blockchain candidates may implement transaction construction or signing logic. The emphasis is on code quality, architecture, and product thinking rather than algorithmic puzzles
- System design / architecture (60 min) — Design a wallet feature end-to-end: a multi-chain swap interface, a transaction simulation system, or a cross-platform state management architecture. Phantom looks for candidates who think about both the technical implementation and the user experience simultaneously
- Take-home or deep dive (varies) — Some teams use a small take-home project; others do a live deep dive into a specific technical area. For Rust roles, expect to write Rust. For mobile roles, expect to discuss React Native performance optimization, native module bridging, and platform-specific concerns
- Team and culture (45 min) — Conversations with multiple team members focused on collaboration, product taste, and whether you are someone the team wants to work with daily in a small environment
Being a Phantom user is practically a prerequisite. The interview process surfaces whether you have genuine product opinions — what works, what does not, what you would build differently. Candidates who clearly use competing wallets or have not spent meaningful time with the product will struggle regardless of technical ability.
Compensation
Phantom pays at top-of-market rates for a venture-backed company, reflecting the high bar for hiring and the expectation of outsized individual contribution.
Approximate ranges (2026, total compensation):
- Mid-level Engineer: $200k-$300k (base $160k-$200k + equity)
- Senior Engineer: $300k-$430k (base $200k-$260k + equity)
- Staff Engineer: $400k-$550k (base $250k-$300k + significant equity)
Junior roles are rare — Phantom's team size means they typically hire experienced engineers who can be productive with minimal ramp-up.
Equity is private company stock options at a $1.2 billion valuation. Phantom has a real revenue model (swap fees generate meaningful income), which gives the equity a stronger foundation than companies relying purely on future token launches. That said, the path to liquidity is the standard private company question — IPO, acquisition, or secondary sale at some future date.
Benefits include comprehensive health insurance, generous PTO, equipment stipends, and the perks of a well-funded SF-based startup. The small team size means you also get direct access to leadership, meaningful input on company direction, and the kind of ownership that only exists in small organizations.
Why You Might NOT Want to Work There
Phantom is an exceptional company, but the environment is not right for everyone.
Extremely selective, high expectations. With roughly 50 people building a product for 10 million+ users, the performance expectations are intense. There is no room to coast, and the small team size means underperformance is visible immediately. If you want a slower-paced environment with room for gradual growth, this is not it.
Limited role availability. Phantom hires infrequently. You may wait months for a relevant position to open, and when it does, competition will be fierce. If you need to make a move quickly, relying on a Phantom opening is not a practical strategy.
Consumer product pressure. Wallet security incidents — phishing attacks, malicious dApp approvals, exploits — happen regularly in the crypto ecosystem, and they frequently generate public backlash directed at wallet providers. Working at Phantom means operating under the scrutiny of millions of users who will vocally blame the wallet when things go wrong, even when the fault lies elsewhere.
Not a protocol. If you want to work on decentralized governance, token economics, or protocol design, Phantom is a product company, not a protocol team. You are building a client application, and while that application interacts with multiple protocols, the core work is product engineering, not protocol engineering.
Equity concentration risk. Your compensation is meaningfully tied to Phantom's success as a company. The $1.2 billion valuation means there is less asymmetric upside than an early-stage startup, and the lack of liquidity means you cannot monetize your equity until a future event. If Phantom stumbles — a major security incident, a competitor leap, a sustained bear market — your equity value could compress.
Should You Apply?
Phantom is the right choice if you are a product-minded engineer who wants to build something beautiful and useful that millions of people touch every day. The team is small, the product quality is exceptional, the compensation is strong, and the engineering challenges — multi-chain support, cross-platform architecture, real-time wallet UX — are genuinely interesting. Working at Phantom gives you the rare combination of consumer scale and startup intimacy.
It is the wrong choice if you prefer larger teams with more structure, if you want protocol-level work, or if you need immediate equity liquidity. Phantom is a small, high-performing team that expects excellence from every person. If that excites you rather than intimidates you, it is one of the best places to work in all of crypto.
Browse open Phantom roles and hundreds of other Web3 positions on gm.careers. If you are exploring wallet and consumer crypto careers more broadly, check out our guide to Web3 career paths.