Senior Data Layer Engineer: Build a Scalable API Platform

Coinbase; Richmond (VA); On-site; USD 186,000 - 219,000; Full time

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Data Layer to shape the GraphQL API platform that connects every client application to Coinbase's backend services, handling the majority of user traffic across Consumer, Base, and Institutional products.

You will own critical systems end-to-end, design high-reliability, low-latency services, and mentor engineers while collaborating with cross-functional teams to evolve the platform and tooling.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional engineering experience with distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Go or Java and microservices design.
• Delivery of end-to-end projects with reliability and performance.
• Experience decomposing systems into clean APIs for multiple teams.
• Ability to align platform goals with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Responsible use of generative AI with human oversight.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end projects from scoping through validation.
• Design high-reliability, low-latency systems serving millions.
• Improve API framework and tooling used by hundreds of engineers.
• Drive SLOs, observability, incident response and toil reduction.
• Collaborate with product engineering to design API schemas.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to architectural direction.

Skills

5+ years experience

Backend development

Go

Java

Microservices

API design

On-call ownership

Job description

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Data Layer to shape the GraphQL API platform that connects every client application to Coinbase's backend services, handling the majority of user traffic across Consumer, Base, and Institutional products.

You will own critical systems end-to-end, design high-reliability, low-latency services, and mentor engineers while collaborating with cross-functional teams to evolve the platform and tooling.