Forward Deployed Engineer, Legal [Office of the CTO]

at Coinbase

📍 United States

USD 218,000-256,500 per year

SENIOR

✅ Remote

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

AI @ 6 Compliance @ 3 GenAI Generative AI @ 6 LLM @ 4 Leadership @ 4 Prompt Engineering @ 4

Details

Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company, with quarterly in-person working sessions called “surges.” This role sits directly inside the Office of the CTO as a founding engineer embedded within the Legal organization. You will identify high-value workflow opportunities, rapidly prototype solutions using Coinbase’s existing AI platform, and drive measurable adoption of AI tooling across Legal. You will act as an advocate, translator, and builder between Legal stakeholders and the engineering teams that maintain Coinbase’s AI platform.

Responsibilities

Embed with Legal leadership to identify automation opportunities with the greatest business leverage, developing an understanding of workflows such as contract review, regulatory filing drafts, and subsidiary governance.
Rapidly prototype pragmatic solutions using Coinbase’s existing AI platform as the default foundation before recommending new builds.
Own the Legal automation roadmap in partnership with the VP of Legal and Chief Compliance Officer, translating legal workflows—including entity management, litigation tracking, product counsel reviews, and compliance reporting—into engineering requirements.
Clearly communicate engineering constraints to Legal stakeholders.
Define the build-versus-buy strategy for Legal tooling, evaluating what Coinbase should build internally, adopt from partner teams, procure from vendors, or retire.
Ensure automated legal outputs are traceable, reviewable, and defensible, with privilege boundaries, auditability, and human-in-the-loop controls treated as first-class design concerns.
Drive adoption through brown-bag sessions, prototype walkthroughs, and feedback loops with Legal teams.

Requirements

5+ years of software engineering experience and a demonstrated ability to ship production systems in ambiguous, stakeholder-heavy environments. Greenfield experience is a strong plus.
Hands-on experience deploying LLM-based applications, including prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, hallucination guardrails, and human-in-the-loop design for high-stakes legal outputs.
Ability to work with non-technical domain experts, rapidly understand complex workflows, and translate them into engineering requirements.
Familiarity with legal and compliance systems concepts, including contract lifecycle management, regulatory filing workflows, entity governance, and privilege-sensitive data handling.
An attorney qualification is not required, but candidates should be open to learning legal and compliance concepts.
Familiarity with multi-agent orchestration concepts, including agent handoffs, escalation, and auditability.
Experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, or an embedded technical advisory role, ideally in legal technology, compliance technology, or RegTech.
Ability to use generative AI responsibly, maintain human oversight, and deliver business-ready outputs that improve workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Compensation

The annual base salary range is $218,025–$256,500 USD, excluding equity and bonus. Total compensation may also include equity, bonus eligibility, and benefits such as medical, dental, vision, and 401(k).