Lead Backend Engineer — Secure Access & Authorization

Coinbase, Inc.; Honolulu (HI); Hybrid; USD 218,000 - 257,000; Full time

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Access & Authorization team. You will design and implement authentication and authorization capabilities that scale across Coinbase products and partner integrations, using Go and gRPC while balancing security with a smooth user experience.

You will own end-to-end design, build scalable services, and mentor colleagues, contributing to a secure, reliable infrastructure with strong observability and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• 8+ years backend software engineering in production.
• Strong design of secure APIs and authentication/authorization systems.
• Experience with OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWTs.
• Ability to work with cross-functional teams and communicate clearly.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end design and operation of authentication, authorization, sessions, tokens, and edge access controls.
• Build secure Go services with low latency and high throughput; ensure observability and SLOs.
• Lead technical designs for advanced features like passkeys and biometric recovery; ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
• Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar through reviews and on-call participation.

Skills

Go programming

OAuth 2.0

OpenID Connect

JWTs

gRPC

Distributed systems

Security

Tools

Protocol Buffers

Redis

DynamoDB

Job description

Coinbase is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Access & Authorization team. You will design and implement authentication and authorization capabilities that scale across Coinbase products and partner integrations, using Go and gRPC while balancing security with a smooth user experience.

You will own end-to-end design, build scalable services, and mentor colleagues, contributing to a secure, reliable infrastructure with strong observability and operational excellence.