Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Institutional - Foundations)

Details

Coinbase is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to help build the emerging onchain platform and foundational infrastructure used across institutional products (Coinbase Prime, Custody, Commerce, Exchange, etc.). The role balances deep individual contribution with technical leadership: anchoring projects, defining technical direction, mentoring engineers, and delivering high-quality production systems. The team is remote-first but in-person participation (team and company offsites) is required throughout the year.

Responsibilities

• Architect and develop distributed systems and foundational infrastructure components (examples called out: dynamic configuration, secrets storage, container orchestration).
• Provide technical structure to teams and collaborate with management and stakeholders to define strategic roadmaps.
• Manage project priorities, deadlines and deliverables using technical expertise.
• Mentor and train other engineers on design techniques and coding standards.
• Design and implement infrastructure used across engineering teams in production.
• Write high-quality, well-tested code to meet customer needs.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering.
• Proven experience architecting and developing solutions to ambiguous problems with significant impact.
• Strong interest in crypto/blockchain technology and Coinbase’s mission to build an open financial system.
• Ability to operate across a diverse tech stack and pick up new technologies as needed.
• Comfortable working in an intense, high-caliber engineering culture that expects in-person participation at times.

Nice to have

• Experience through rapid company growth (e.g., scaling from 10 to hundreds of engineers).
• Experience with blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum) and onchain activity (interacting with addresses, ENS, dApps).
• Experience decomposing a large monolith into microservices.
• Experience with Golang, Ruby, Docker, Sinatra, Rails, Postgres.
• Experience building financial, high-reliability, or security-focused systems.

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision plans with generous employee contributions.
• Health Savings Account with company contributions.
• Disability and life insurance.
• 401(k) plan with company match.
• Wellness stipend, mobile/internet reimbursement, connections stipend.
• Volunteer time off, fertility counseling and benefits.
• Generous time off / leave policy.
• Option to get paid in digital currency.

Compensation

• Pay Range (target annual salary): $211,650 — $249,000 USD. Full-time offers also include target bonus, target equity, and benefits.

Other notes

• Job #: GIBE06US
• Answers to crypto-related questions may be used to evaluate onchain experience.
• Coinbase pilots certain AI tools for initial screening interviews and interview note summarization; humans review recordings/transcripts. Reasonable accommodations available upon request.