Senior Software Engineer, Data Layer

Details

At Coinbase, the Data Layer team within the Platform group shapes the GraphQL API platform connecting every client application to Coinbase's backend services. The platform handles the majority of user traffic across Consumer, Base, and Institutional products. This role owns critical systems that route and serve API requests at scale while improving reliability, performance, and developer experience for hundreds of engineers.

Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Employees are expected to meet quarterly for in-person working sessions called “surges.”

Responsibilities

• Own and deliver projects end to end, from scoping and system design through implementation, rollout, and production validation.
• Design and build high-reliability, low-latency systems serving millions of users, including solutions for caching, upstream service optimization, and efficient connection management at scale.
• Build and improve the GraphQL API framework and tooling used by hundreds of engineers to build, test, and ship independently.
• Drive operational excellence across T0 services by owning SLOs, improving observability, leading incident response, and reducing operational toil.
• Partner with product engineering teams to design API schemas, support service launches, and evolve the platform to meet their needs.
• Set the technical bar through code and design reviews, mentor engineers, and contribute to architectural direction.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional engineering experience with demonstrated ownership of complex, production-grade distributed systems.
• Deep proficiency in backend languages such as Go, Java, or similar.
• Hands-on experience designing microservices, API platforms, and high-availability systems.
• Experience delivering projects end to end, including scoping, architecture, implementation, monitoring, and iteration.
• Experience decomposing complex systems into clean APIs and abstractions adopted by multiple consuming teams.
• Comfort owning on-call responsibilities and driving incident response across multi-service architectures.
• Ability to align technical decisions with cross-functional stakeholders and translate platform capabilities into actionable plans with frontend engineers, product teams, and platform consumers.
• Ability to use generative AI responsibly with human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and improve workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Compensation

• Annual base salary: $186,065–$218,900 USD, excluding equity and bonus.
• Total compensation may also include equity, bonus eligibility, and medical, dental, vision, and 401(k) benefits.

Additional Information

• Candidates may submit a maximum of three applications within a six-month period.
• Coinbase is an equal opportunity employer.
• US applicants must review the applicable employee rights, Know Your Rights, and E-Verify notices.
• Reasonable accommodations are available for applicants with disabilities.
• Applicants agree to the Candidate Privacy Notice and, for US applicants, arbitration of disputes when submitting an application.