Principal Engineer, CoinDesk Data Engineering

Bullish, Inc.; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

CoinDesk Data Engineering Team builds the high‑performance infrastructure powering the world’s most trusted crypto market data, architecting resilient systems that process over 26 billion monthly requests for real‑time market information. Our technical scope spans automated data extraction to high‑throughput REST APIs, WebSocket streaming, and client deliveries.

Join as a senior backend leader to shape a long‑term technical roadmap, design high‑throughput services, mentor engineers, and drive

Qualifications

• 8+ years in backend development with leadership responsibilities.
• Experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Proficient in REST and WebSocket architectures.
• Experience with data-intensive workloads and high availability.
• DevSecOps mindset with CI/CD and infrastructure as code.
• Strong communication and cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Drive Technical Evolution: develop a cohesive, long-term technical roadmap for services (REST, streaming) toward a scalable architecture.
• Architect for the Future: design resilient, high-throughput systems with robust security and maintainability.
• Tackle Foundational Challenges: own cross-team data resiliency, uptime, and evolution of client-facing infra.
• Elevate Engineering Excellence: mentor senior engineers on architecture, trade-offs, and best practices.
• Champion Cross-Cutting Initiatives: lead improvements in observability, tooling, and testing strategies.

Skills

Backend leadership

Distributed systems

REST APIs

WebSockets

Messaging systems

PostgreSQL/Redis

CI/CD

Observability

Testing

Stakeholder comms

Tools

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

CoinDesk is the most trusted media, events, indices and data company for the global crypto economy. Since 2013, CoinDesk Media has led the story of the future of money and investing, illuminating the transformation in society and culture that comes with it. Our award‑winning team of journalists delivers news and unparalleled insights that bring transparency, comprehension, and context. CoinDesk Events gathers the global crypto, blockchain and Web3 communities at annual events such as Consensus, the world’s largest and longest-running crypto festival. CoinDesk Indices offers expertise in digital asset indices, data, and research to educate and empower investors. For more information on CoinDesk media and events, please visit http://coindesk.com [coindesk.com] and for breaking headlines, data and indices visit http://coindeskmarkets.com [coindeskmarkets.com] In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated, digital assets exchange. For more information on Bullish, please visit https://bullish.com . CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence. Reports to: Director, Engineering, CoinDesk Engineering Organisation & Culture At CoinDesk, we do more than report on the future of money; we actively help shape it. As the global leader in crypto news, indices, and events, we provide the transparency and context the world needs to understand the digital asset revolution. Our team is dedicated to a shared mission of informing, educating, and connecting the global community. Our impact is further amplified by our position within the Bullish Group. Operating as a subsidiary of Bullish, a regulated, institutional‑grade exchange known for its technological prowess, CoinDesk is powered by a partner that shares our fundamental belief in the transformative power of digital assets.

The Team:

CoinDesk Data Engineering The CoinDesk Data Engineering Team builds the high‑performance infrastructure that powers the world’s most trusted crypto market data, architecting resilient systems that process over 26 billion monthly requests for real‑time market information. Our technical scope is expansive, encompassing the automated extraction and normalization of data from global exchanges to be served via high‑throughput REST APIs, WebSocket streaming, and direct client deliveries. We operate with a high degree of ownership over mission‑critical infrastructure, calculating the flagship indices that power some of the largest ETFs on the market while bridging the gap between creative freedom and institutional‑grade stability. As a core part of the global leader in crypto news and indices, our work provides the transparency and context necessary to help shape the future of money.

What You’ll Do

• Drive Technical Evolution: Develop and champion a cohesive, long‑term technical roadmap that elevates our existing services (internal, external, REST, streaming) towards a unified and scalable architectural vision.
• Architect for the Future: Lead the design of resilient, high‑throughput systems, ensuring new solutions are not only robust and secure but also set the standard for future development across teams.
• Tackle Foundational Challenges: Act as the technical point person for our most complex cross‑team challenges, such as ensuring data resiliency, uptime, or evolving our client facing infrastructure without service interruption.
• Elevate Engineering Excellence: Mentor senior engineers on advanced architectural patterns, trade‑off analysis, and operational best practices, fostering a culture of technical curiosity and ownership.
• Champion Cross‑Cutting Initiatives: Identify and lead engineering‑wide improvements in areas like observability, developer tooling, and testing strategies to increase performance and reliability across all services.

What You’ll Bring

• Principal‑Level Experience: 8+ years in backend development, with a proven track record in a Staff, Principal, or equivalent technical leadership role where you were responsible for the technical direction of multiple services.
• Expertise in Distributed Systems: Deep, hands‑on experience designing, building, and operating complex, large‑scale distributed systems. You should have specific experience with both synchronous (e.g. REST APIs) and asynchronous (e.g. WebSockets, message queues like Kafka or RabbitMQ, event streams) communication patterns.
• Operational Resilience: Experience with High Availability or sophisticated disaster recovery strategies for global, 24/7 financial systems.
• Pragmatic Polyglot: Demonstrated ability to effectively use multiple languages in production environments (a proficiency in either Node.js or Golang) and the expertise to choose the right technology for the problem at hand.
• Strategic Buy vs. Build: Lead the evaluation of third‑party vendors versus internal builds for core data infrastructure to ensure cost‑efficiency and performance.
• Data‑Intensive Application Expertise: Strong practical experience with modern databases (e.g., Redis, PostgreSQL), including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning for high‑throughput workloads.
• Full Lifecycle Ownership: A strong "DevSecOps" mindset with expertise in building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure‑as‑code, and robust observability (monitoring, logging, tracing) for production systems.
• Quality as a Feature: A deep commitment to quality, demonstrated by implementing comprehensive testing strategies (unit, integration, end‑to‑end, performance) that ensure system reliability.
• Influence and Collaboration: Exceptional communication skills with the proven ability to influence technical and non‑technical stakeholders, articulate complex architectural decisions, and build consensus across multiple teams.

Nice to Haves

• Cloud Architecture: Experience designing and deploying services on a major cloud provider (Azure, GCP).
• Blockchain Expertise: A strong understanding of blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized ecosystems is a significant plus.
• Financial Market Knowledge: Interest or prior experience in traditional financial markets, trading systems, or investment platforms.
• Containerization & Deployment: Proficiency with containerization technologies such as Docker or Kubernetes.
• Observability: Hands‑on experience with modern observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, DataDog, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry).
• Data Governance: Experience with data privacy (GDPR/CCPA) and security compliance in a regulated financial environment.

Please note you will need the right to work in the UK.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY In an effort to attract, retain, develop and promote the most qualified individuals, CoinDesk is committed to treating all applicants and employees in a nondiscriminatory manner with respect to the terms and conditions of employment, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status/service, physical or mental disability, or any other classification protected by applicable law. This mandate governs all aspects of employment, including recruitment, selection, promotion, training, education, social and recreation programs, compensation, discipline, termination and access to benefits.

ACCOMMODATION

CoinDesk 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 application process, please send an e-mail to [e-mail] and let us know the nature of your request. Learn more at www.coindesk.com