Senior Software Engineer, Data Layer — High-Scale API

Nerdleveltech; United States; On-site; USD 186,065 - 218,900; Full time

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Software Engineer in the Data Layer to shape the API platform that connects clients to backend services across Consumer, Base, and Institutional products. You will own critical systems routing API requests at scale, improving reliability and performance for hundreds of engineers.

You will design high‑reliability, low‑latency systems, contribute to the API framework, and mentor engineers while aligning technical decisions with cross‑functional stakeholders in a

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional engineering experience with ownership of complex, production-grade distributed systems.
• Deep proficiency in backend languages (Go, Java, or similar) with hands-on experience designing microservices, API platforms, and high-availability systems.
• Track record of delivering projects end to end, including scoping, architecture, implementation, monitoring, and iteration, in environments where reliability and performance are non-negotiable.
• Experience decomposing complex systems into clean APIs and abstractions adopted by multiple consuming teams, with comfort owning on-call responsibilities and driving incident response across multi-service architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to align technical decisions with cross-functional stakeholders, translating platform capabilities into actionable plans with frontend engineers, product teams, and platform consumers.
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Responsibilities

• Own and deliver projects end to end, from scoping and system design through implementation, rollout, and production validation, driving measurable progress on the team's highest-priority initiatives.
• Design and build high-reliability, low-latency systems serving millions of users, tackling challenges like caching, upstream service optimization, and efficient connection management at scale.
• Build and improve the API framework and tooling that hundreds of engineers depend on, making it fast and easy for teams across the company to build, test, and ship independently.
• Drive operational excellence across T0 services: own SLOs, improve observability, lead incident response, and reduce operational toil so the team can invest in high-leverage work.
• Partner cross-functionally with product engineering teams to design API schemas, support service launches, and ensure the platform evolves to meet their needs.
• Set the technical bar through code and design reviews, mentor engineers across the team, and contribute to architectural direction.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

Go

Java

Microservices

On-call

Mentoring

Job description

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Software Engineer in the Data Layer to shape the API platform that connects clients to backend services across Consumer, Base, and Institutional products. You will own critical systems routing API requests at scale, improving reliability and performance for hundreds of engineers.

You will design high‑reliability, low‑latency systems, contribute to the API framework, and mentor engineers while aligning technical decisions with cross‑functional stakeholders in a