Senior Backend Engineer — Risk & Fraud Platform

Coinbase, Inc.; Topeka (KS); Remote; USD 167,000 - 205,000; Full time

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Consumer - Risk) to design, build, and optimize risk platforms that detect and prevent fraud in real-time for a crypto-scale audience. You will lead end-to-end features, drive architecture decisions, and mentor engineers to improve reliability and performance.

The role collaborates with data science, ML, risk, and compliance teams to deliver proactive and reactive risk solutions, leveraging AI with human oversight to balance security and

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience with a track record of delivering complex, high-impact systems in production environments.
• Deep proficiency in backend languages (Go, Ruby, Python, or Java) with demonstrated experience designing distributed systems including microservices, event-driven architectures, and REST/GraphQL APIs
• Proven ability to translate ambiguous requirements into clear technical plans and working architectures, driving technical clarity across engineering, product, and data science teams
• Track record leading end-to-end projects with long-term impact, including scoping, design, implementation, monitoring, and mentoring other engineers through the process
• Experience leading incident response, conducting post-mortems, and driving measurable operational improvements in high-availability systems
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of complex risk platform features end-to-end, from architecture through implementation, deployment, and monitoring, with stringent requirements for correctness, performance, and reliability
• Drive architectural decisions that shape Coinbase's risk detection and mitigation systems, translating ambiguous business requirements into scalable working architectures that balance fraud prevention with user experience
• Partner cross-functionally with Data Science, ML, Risk Analysts, Product, and Compliance teams to build proactive systems (real-time decisioning engines, model-driven fraud detection) and reactive solutions (incident response tooling, compliance-driven risk controls)
• Build AI-native risk systems that leverage fleets of agents to automate complex detection and response workflows, significantly reducing the need for manual intervention
• Strengthen the team by mentoring engineers, conducting rigorous code reviews, writing technical design documents for complex systems, and championing engineering best practices across the codebase
• Own system quality and operational excellence by proactively addressing technical debt, driving bug triaging, and leading incident response and post-mortems to ensure platform reliability

Skills

Go

Ruby

Python

Java

Distributed systems

Job description

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Consumer - Risk) to design, build, and optimize risk platforms that detect and prevent fraud in real-time for a crypto-scale audience. You will lead end-to-end features, drive architecture decisions, and mentor engineers to improve reliability and performance.

The role collaborates with data science, ML, risk, and compliance teams to deliver proactive and reactive risk solutions, leveraging AI with human oversight to balance security and