Head of Tokenized Referral Economy

About BNI

BNI is the world's largest referral networking organization. 355,000+ members. 11,600+ chapters. 77 countries. $26.9 billion in member-generated business over the last twelve months. The whole thing runs on one mechanic: trusted referrals between people who have a reason to help each other.

That mechanic has worked for over 35 years. We think it can work even better — and we think Web3 has something real to offer here, not as a gimmick, but as a genuinely better way to track, reward and verify the referral relationships that our network is built on.

We're looking for someone who has thought seriously about token economies and actually built or contributed to one — to help us figure out what a tokenized referral system for a global business network could look like, and then build it.

The Role

This is a design and delivery role in equal measure. You'll be responsible for developing the framework for how tokenized incentives, on-chain reputation and verifiable referral records could work within BNI's existing model — and then working with product, tech and operations teams to move from concept to something real.

You won't be the only person working on this, but you'll be the person who owns the thinking. That means being able to go deep on mechanism design, communicate the implications clearly to non-technical stakeholders, and stay grounded in what will actually work for a member base that skews toward traditional business owners rather than crypto natives.

This role is based remotely in Australia. The APAC timezone gives good coverage across our regional teams and reasonable overlap with our global leadership in the US.

What You'll Actually Be Doing

- Designing the tokenized incentive model — how referrals get recorded, verified and rewarded on-chain, what the token mechanics look like, how value accrues and circulates within the network

- Working through the harder questions: inflation, gaming, sybil resistance, member psychology, regulatory considerations across multiple jurisdictions

- Translating the mechanism design into clear documentation that product and engineering teams can actually build from

- Working with BNI's existing membership and chapter data to understand the referral flows that need to be replicated or improved on-chain

- Identifying the right infrastructure — which chain, which tooling, which partners — and making the case for those decisions internally

- Collaborating with the compliance and legal team to make sure the model is structurally sound across key markets, starting with Australia and then APAC more broadly

- Running pilots with willing chapter groups before any wider rollout — designing the test, measuring what matters, iterating based on what you find

- Building the internal knowledge base around token economy concepts so that BNI leadership and regional teams can engage with this meaningfully over time

What We're Looking For

You've designed or been a core contributor to a token economy that actually launched. Not a whitepaper — something that went to mainnet, had real users and had to survive contact with reality. You know what happens when an incentive model meets actual human behaviour, and you've had to fix it.

You understand the mechanics deeply: emission schedules, vesting, governance, staking, reputation systems, sybil resistance, liquidity. Not as a checklist — as things you've had to make real trade-offs about.

You also know what doesn't work. You've seen token economies collapse or get gamed and you have a clear view on why. That kind of scepticism is exactly what this role needs, because BNI's referral model is genuinely valuable and we're not interested in breaking it in the name of Web3 innovation.

You're comfortable talking to people who are not in crypto. The internal audience for this work includes chapter directors, franchise owners and regional managers who have built their careers in traditional business networking. Your job is to make the model work for them, not to convert them to your worldview.

Nice to Have

- Experience with reputation systems or identity primitives (ENS, Lens, proof-of-personhood, etc.)

- Familiarity with regulatory frameworks around digital assets in Australia and APAC

- Background working with membership organisations, loyalty programs or referral-based business models

- Experience presenting technical designs to non-technical executive teams

- Prior involvement in DAO governance — especially where you had to deal with low participation or governance attacks

Compensation and Benefits

- Base salary: USD $160,000 – $200,000 (based on experience)

- Performance incentives linked to pilot outcomes and program milestones

- Superannuation contributions in line with Australian statutory requirements (currently 11.5%)

- Fully remote — no office, no commute, work from wherever makes sense

- Flexible hours with agreed team overlap windows — output matters more than hours

- 20 days annual leave + Australian public holidays

- Annual learning and development budget (AUD $5,000) — protocol memberships, conferences, courses, tooling

- Home office equipment allowance (AUD $2,500 on joining)

- Access to BNI's global network of business owners — useful context for anyone designing systems that need to work for real people

A Note on What This Is and Isn't

This isn't a role for someone who wants to attach a token to something and call it Web3. The referral economy BNI has built over 35 years is real and it works. The bar for changing it is high, and that's appropriate.

What we're genuinely interested in is whether the underlying mechanics — tracking who referred whom, building verifiable reputation over time, rewarding sustained contribution to the network — can be made more transparent, more portable and more valuable using on-chain infrastructure. If you think that's an interesting design problem and you have the background to work on it seriously, we'd like to talk.

How to Apply

Apply directly through this LinkedIn posting.

To move things along faster, send your CV, a link to your LinkedIn profile, and a short description of a token economy or incentive system you've designed or contributed to — what problem it solved, what the mechanics were, and what you learned from seeing it run to [email protected].

Subject line: Head of Tokenized Referral Economy — [Your Name]

Applications that come through both LinkedIn and email are reviewed first. We don't need a formal cover letter — just something concrete about what you've actually built.