Senior Staff Software Engineer, Institutional Exchange

Coinbase; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 260,000 - 360,000; Full time

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Exchange team to set architectural direction for matching engines, order management, market data, and unified trading systems that handle billions in daily volume. You will be the senior technical voice across teams, owning latency, correctness, and resilience.

Expect to lead multi-quarter initiatives from ambiguity to delivery while maintaining hands-on contribution and mentoring junior leaders on a lean team.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering with production trading/exchange systems.
• Expert in low-latency distributed systems and JVM/Linux tuning.
• End-to-end trading platform ownership across venues and risk.
• Ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy and architecture for a core Exchange domain.
• Lead design of ultra-low-latency, event-sourced trading systems across matching, risk, and market data.
• Drive cross-team technical alignment across Exchange, Prime, and Derivatives.
• Set and inspect the quality bar across teams for testing, failover, and 24/7 markets.
• Maintain hands-on contribution while guiding senior engineers and leads.
• Mentor L5-L6 engineers and build next-level technical leadership.

Skills

Low-latency systems

Java/C++/Go

Architectural ownership

Cross-team influence

Incident command

Job description

Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? AtCoinbase, we are uncompromising on our mission to increase economic freedom. The bar is high, the environment is intense, and we like it that way. This isn't a place for complacency, it's a place to be pushed past your perceived limits. If you're ready to build the future of finance alongside people who refuse to settle for "good enough," you belong here. Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called "surges".learn more about working at Coinbase.

Coinbase is building the future of institutional trading as part of the Institutional Everything Exchange, powering the systems that let the world's largest financial institutions trade across markets with speed, depth, and trust. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Exchange team, you'll set the architectural direction for the matching engine, order management, market data, and unified trading systems that clear billions of dollars in daily volume. You'll operate as the most senior technical voice across multiple teams, making the calls on latency, correctness, and resilience that everything else depends on. It's a rare chance to shape a trading platform from the ground up, with the ownership of a startup and the reach of Coinbase.

What you'll do:

• Own the technical strategy and architecture for a core Exchange domain, driving multi-quarter initiatives from ambiguity through incremental milestones to delivery.
• Lead the design of ultra-low-latency, event-sourced trading systems spanning matching, risk, and market data across cloud and colocated environments.
• Drive cross-team technical alignment across Exchange, Prime, and Derivatives, securing commitment from senior engineering and product leadership.
• Set and inspect the quality bar across teams - deterministic testing, failover design, incident leadership, and operational standards for 24/7 markets.
• Maintain significant hands-on contribution while leading execution through other senior engineers and tech leads.
• Mentor L5-L6 engineers and build the next rung of technical leadership on a lean, high-leverage team.

Required Skills and Experience:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant ownership of production trading, exchange, or market-data systems at scale.
• Deep expertise in low-latency distributed systems and a backend language such as Java, C++, or Go, with fluency in JVM/Linux performance tuning.
• Demonstrated architectural ownership of an end-to-end trading platform - order management, multi-venue connectivity, and real-time risk - not a single component.
• Proven track record influencing technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority.
• Experience operating latency-sensitive systems in on-prem/colocated and cloud environments, including incident command and safe production change.