Principal Engineer, CoinDesk Data Engineering

CoinDesk; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work schedule

Health insurance

Professional development opportunities

Job summary

A leading crypto media company in Greater London is seeking a Principal Engineer to develop and architect resilient data systems. The successful candidate must possess a minimum of 8+ years in backend development and have extensive experience with distributed systems. Responsibilities include mentoring teams, driving technical initiatives, and ensuring service reliability. The role offers competitive compensation and a unique opportunity to shape the future of crypto technology.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in backend development, acting in a Staff or Principal role.
• Hands-on experience with large-scale distributed systems and high availability.
• Ability to work with multiple production languages.

Responsibilities

• Develop a long-term technical roadmap for services.
• Design resilient, high-throughput systems.
• Mentor senior engineers on architectural patterns.
• Lead improvements in developer tooling and testing.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

Data-intensive applications

Data governance

Cloud architecture

Tools

Node.js

Golang

Redis

PostgreSQL

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Overview

Reports To Director, Engineering, CoinDesk

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. 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 coindesk.com and coindeskmarkets.com.

In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated digital assets exchange. CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence.

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 amplified by our position within the Bullish Group. CoinDesk is powered by a partner that shares our belief in the transformative power of digital assets.

We value engineers who treat development as a craft and own the outcome from concept to deployment. You will be expected to navigate the unknown, bring structure to ambiguity, and help shape the frameworks and processes that drive our global teams forward. We seek problem solvers who thrive on high-impact technical challenges.

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 scope includes automated extraction and normalization of data from global exchanges served via high-throughput REST APIs, WebSocket streaming, and direct client deliveries. We own mission-critical infrastructure and help calculate flagship indices that power large ETFs, bridging creative freedom with 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 existing services (internal, external, REST, streaming) toward a unified and scalable architectural vision.
• Architect for the Future: Lead the design of resilient, high-throughput systems, ensuring new solutions are robust, secure, and set the standard for future development across teams.
• Tackle Foundational Challenges: Act as the technical point person for complex cross-team challenges, ensuring data resiliency, uptime, and evolving client-facing infrastructure without service interruption.
• Elevate Engineering Excellence: Mentor senior engineers on advanced architectural patterns, trade-offs, and operational best practices, fostering technical curiosity and ownership.
• Champion Cross-Cutting Initiatives: Identify and lead engineering-wide improvements in 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 directing multiple services.
• Expertise in Distributed Systems: Hands-on experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems. Experience with synchronous (REST) and asynchronous (WebSockets, Kafka/RabbitMQ, event streams) patterns.
• Operational Resilience: Experience with high availability or sophisticated disaster recovery strategies for global, 24/7 financial systems.
• Pragmatic Polyglot: Ability to use multiple production languages (proficiency in Node.js or Golang) and choose the right technology for the problem.
• Strategic Buy vs. Build: Lead evaluation of third-party vendors versus internal builds for core data infrastructure to ensure cost-efficiency and performance.
• Data-Intensive Application Expertise: Strong経験 with modern databases (e.g., Redis, PostgreSQL), including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning for high-throughput workloads.
• Full Lifecycle Ownership: DevSecOps mindset with expertise in CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and robust observability (monitoring, logging, tracing) for production systems.
• Quality as a Feature: Commitment to quality with comprehensive testing strategies (unit, integration, end-to-end, performance) to ensure reliability.
• Influence and Collaboration: Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders and build consensus across teams.

Nice to Haves

• Cloud Architecture: Experience on major cloud providers (Azure, GCP).
• Blockchain Expertise: Understanding of blockchain tech, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized ecosystems.
• Financial Market Knowledge: Interest or experience in traditional financial markets or trading systems.
• Containerization & Deployment: Proficiency with Docker or Kubernetes.
• Observability: Experience with observability tooling (Prometheus, DataDog, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry).
• Data Governance: Experience with data privacy (GDPR/CCPA) and security compliance in a regulated financial environment.

Note: you will need the right to work in the UK.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

CoinDesk is committed to treating all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability, or other legally protected classifications.

ACCOMMODATION

CoinDesk is committed to providing reasonable accommodations. If you need an accommodation for any part of the application process, please email [e-mail] with details of your request.