Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Institutional - Foundations)

Details

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, Coinbase is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Institutional team focused on Foundations. The role balances individual contribution with technical leadership: anchoring new projects, leading technical direction, and mentoring engineers. The team builds products for institutional customers (Coinbase Prime, Coinbase Advanced Trade, Custody, Commerce, Exchange) covering trading, financing, staking, governance, custody, and API integrations. The engineering organization leverages a diverse tech stack and values engineers who have worked on complex projects and can pick up whatever technology is necessary.

Coinbase is remote-first but not remote-only: in-person participation is required throughout the year for team and company offsites. Attendance is expected and supported.

Responsibilities

• Architect and develop distributed systems.
• Provide technical structure to teams and work closely with management and stakeholders to define strategic roadmaps.
• Manage individual project priorities, deadlines, and deliverables with 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 (examples called out: dynamic configuration, secrets storage, container orchestration).
• Write high-quality, well-tested code to meet the needs of your customers.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering.
• Experience architecting and developing solutions to ambiguous problems with significant impact.
• Passion about building an open financial system and the power of crypto and blockchain technology.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills; openness to feedback and mentoring others.

Nice to have

• Experience through rapid company growth (e.g., scaling from tens to hundreds of engineers).
• Experience with blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum).
• Experience decomposing a large monolith into microservices.
• Experience with Golang, Ruby, Docker, Sinatra, Rails, Postgres.
• Experience building financial, high-reliability, or security-sensitive systems.
• Crypto-forward experience (interacting with Ethereum addresses, using ENS, engaging with dApps or blockchain-based services).

Compensation

• Target annual salary range: $217,900 — $217,900 USD. Full-time offers also include target bonus, target equity, and benefits (medical, dental, vision).

Benefits

• Extended health care (coordinates with provincial coverage)
• Dental care
• Vision care
• Virtual health care (Consult+)
• Life & accident insurance
• Disability coverage
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)
• Wellness stipend
• Mobile/internet reimbursement
• Connections stipend
• Learning and development allowance
• Employee assistance program
• Travel medical policy - global traveler
• Fertility benefits
• Generous time off / leave policy

Additional notes

• Job #: GIBE06US
• Answers to crypto-related questions may be used to evaluate onchain experience.
• Coinbase is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.
• AI interview pilots may be used for select roles as described in the posting.