Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Institutional - Foundations)

Ready to be pushed beyond what you think you're capable of?

At Coinbase, our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world. It's a massive, ambitious opportunity that demands the best of us, every day, as we build the emerging onchain platform - and with it, the future global financial system.

To achieve our mission, we're seeking a very specific candidate. We want someone who is passionate about our mission and who believes in the power of crypto and blockchain technology to update the financial system. We want someone who is eager to leave their mark on the world, who relishes the pressure and privilege of working with high caliber colleagues, and who actively seeks feedback to keep leveling up. We want someone who will run towards, not away from, solving the company's hardest problems.

Our work culture is intense and isn't for everyone. But if you want to build the future alongside others who excel in their disciplines and expect the same from you, there's no better place to be.

While many roles at Coinbase are remote-first, we are not remote-only. In-person participation is required throughout the year. Team and company-wide offsites are held multiple times annually to foster collaboration, connection, and alignment. Attendance is expected and fully supported.

Coinbase Institutional - Making the Future Real

Without us, crypto is just a whitepaper. We make it real. Coinbase Institutional builds cutting-edge platforms that allow thousands of the world's largest financial institutions to trade, custody, and participate in the global cryptoeconomy. From launching industry "firsts" to scaling secure infrastructure for hundreds of digital assets, we provide the trusted gateways for staking, governance, and web3. Whether it's prime brokerage or international markets, we are building the scalable tech and seamless UI that empowers the biggest players on the planet to move money forward.

Join us, and build the infrastructure for what's next.

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to balance the role of an individual contributor while also anchoring new projects, leading technical direction and mentoring other engineers on the team. We highly value individuals with intellectual curiosity and openness. We collaborate across the organization, helping our engineers think big and take risks while building a culture of diversity, positive energy and blameless truth-seeking. Our engineering team leverages a diverse tech stack and our focus is finding smart engineers who've worked on complex projects and we have all the trust you'd be able to pick up whatever tech necessary in the stack.

You'll be joining the Coinbase Institutional Foundations team. Our engineers create and maintain a suite of products catering to institutional customers of all sizes from Hedge Funds (Coinbase Prime) to experienced individual traders (Coinbase Advanced Trade) and everything in between. Additional Institutional Products include Custody, Commerce, and Exchange. Whether the customer needs are trading, financing, staking, governance, custody or API integrations, Coinbase Institutional has them covered.

What you'll be doing:

• Architect and develop distributed systems
• Provide technical structure to teams and work closely with management and stakeholders to define strategic roadmaps
• Manage individual projects priorities, deadlines and deliverables with your technical expertise
• Mentor and train other team members on design techniques and coding standards
• Design and implement foundational infrastructure components used by every engineering team in production (e.g. dynamic configuration, secrets storage, container orchestration, etc)
• Write high quality, well tested code to meet the needs of your customers

What we look for in you:

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering
• You've experienced architecting and developing solutions to ambiguous problems with significant impact
• You're passionate about building an open financial system that brings the world together

Nice to haves:

• You have gone through a rapid growth in your company (from 10 to 100s of engineers)
• You have experience with Blockchains (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum etc.)
• You have experience decomposing a large monolith into microservices
• You've worked with Golang, Ruby, Docker, Sinatra, Rails, Postgres
• You've built financial, high reliability or security systems

Job #: P75561

Pay Transparency Notice: Depending on your work location, the target annual base salary for this position can range as detailed below. Full time offers from Coinbase also include bonus eligibility + equity eligibility + benefits (including medical, dental, vision and 401(k)).

Base salary range shown. Total compensation also includes equity and bonus eligibility and benefits:

$218,025-$256,500 USD

Please be advised that each candidate may submit a maximum of four applications within any 30-day period. We encourage you to carefully evaluate how your skills and interests align with Coinbase's roles before applying.
Commitment to Equal Opportunity

Coinbase is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation or any other basis protected by applicable law. Coinbase will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. For US applicants, you may view the Employee Rights and the Know Your Rights notices by clicking on their corresponding links. Additionally, Coinbase participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law.

Coinbase is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please contact us at accommodations[at]coinbase.com to let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. For quick access to screen reading technology compatible with this site click here to download a free compatible screen reader (free step by step tutorial can be found here).
Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates and Applicants

Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. Our full notice outlining how data will be processed as part of the application procedure for applicable locations is available here. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. For US applicants only, by submitting your application you are agreeing to arbitration of disputes as outlined here.
AI Disclosure

For select roles, Coinbase is piloting an AI tool based on machine learning technologies to conduct initial screening interviews to qualified applicants. The tool simulates realistic interview scenarios and engages in dynamic conversation. A human recruiter will review your interview responses, provided in the form of a voice recording and/or transcript, to assess them against the qualifications and characteristics outlined in the job description.

For select roles, Coinbase is also piloting an AI interview intelligence platform to transcribe and summarize interview notes, allowing our interviewers to fully focus on you as the candidate.

The above pilots are for testing purposes and Coinbase will not use AI to make decisions impacting employment. To request a reasonable accommodation due to disability, please contact accommodations[at]coinbase.com