Senior Software Engineer, Data Layer — Remote-First Impact

Coinbase; Salem (OR); Hybrid; USD 186,000 - 219,000; Full time

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Data Layer to design and deliver high-scale backend services across the platform.

You will own projects end-to-end, build low-latency systems, improve API frameworks, and drive reliability with SLOs and observability. Collaborate with product teams and other engineers, mentoring others while applying AI responsibly to improve workflows.

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 reliability- and performance-focused environments.
• Experience decomposing complex systems into clean APIs and abstractions adopted by multiple consuming teams, with on-call ownership and 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.

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

Distributed systems

Backend development

API design

On-call / incident response

Cross-functional collaboration

Generative AI usage

Tools

Go

Java

Job description

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Data Layer to design and deliver high-scale backend services across the platform.

You will own projects end-to-end, build low-latency systems, improve API frameworks, and drive reliability with SLOs and observability. Collaborate with product teams and other engineers, mentoring others while applying AI responsibly to improve workflows.