Senior Staff Software Engineer (Platform)

Coinbase, Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Coinbase, Inc. is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer (Uber Tech Lead) for Identity & Access Management within Platform. You will own the technical strategy unifying human, AI agent, service, and workload identity into one platform and drive adoption across 700+ internal systems.

You will set architecture across pods, mentor engineers, and translate regulatory requirements into automated controls. This role requires deep IAM expertise and a track record of leading cross-team technical

Qualifications

• Deep IAM expertise across workforce identity, authorization, access lifecycle, and non-human identity.
• Proven influence at senior levels, driving technical direction and cross-team alignment.
• Production Go experience and distributed systems design on AWS, with fluency in identity protocols and standards (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and workload identity patterns).
• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including a track record as the most senior technical leader on a platform spanning multiple teams.
• Ability to translate audit and regulatory requirements into automated technical controls and communicate complex identity problems to executives.
• Ability to mentor staff and grow depth in identity as a domain.

Responsibilities

• Own the multi-year IAM technical strategy across platforms and domains.
• Set architecture across pods and drive adoption with hundreds of engineering teams.
• Translate audit and regulatory requirements into automated controls and evidence.
• Lead data model and tooling to answer who has access to what and why.
• Grow the technical bench by mentoring staff and strengthening domain depth.

Skills

Identity & Access Management

Distributed systems design

Leadership without authority

Generative AI governance

Tools

AWS

Job description

• We’re hiring a Senior Staff Software Engineer (Uber Tech Lead) for Identity & Access Management within Platform and own the technical strategy that unifies human, AI agent, service, and workload identity into one coherent platform
• IAM is a distributed problem across 700+ internal systems that no central team can implement alone, so this platform must make access consistent, visible, provable, and efficient across every identity type
• You’ll set architecture across multiple pods, drive adoption with hundreds of engineering teams, and act as one of the most senior technical voices for identity and access management at Coinbase
• Own the multi-year technical strategy for IAM end to end, including the architecture that unifies workforce, AI agent, and service/workload identity under a common model with shared primitives for authentication, authorization, provisioning, and governance
• Drive architecture decisions across multiple pods and teams you don’t manage - establishing the standards, review bars, and integration contracts the rest of engineering builds against
• Build the adoption strategy for 700+ systems, including sequencing, migration paths, and build-vs-buy decisions that determine what we own versus integrate
• Partner with Security, Compliance, IT, Infrastructure, and product engineering leadership to translate audit and regulatory requirements (UAR, SOX, SOC 2) into automated controls and self-generating evidence
• Lead the data model and tooling that answer “who has access to what, and why” across a heterogeneous estate, reducing standing privilege while making the secure path the fast path
• Grow the technical bench by mentoring staff and senior engineers and raising the org’s depth in identity as a domain

Deep IAM expertise across more than one domain (workforce identity, authorization, access lifecycle, or non-human identity) with substantive experience in service or workload identity - service-to-service auth, workload identity federation, or machine credential management at scaleProven influence without authority at senior levels - you’ve changed the technical direction of teams and orgs outside your own and secured leadership alignment on ambiguous, org-wide access-risk problemsProduction Go experience and distributed systems design on AWS, with fluency in identity protocols and standards (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and workload identity patterns)12+ years of software engineering experience, including a track record as the most senior technical leader on a platform spanning multiple teams with multi-year architecture driven to adoption across dozens of consuming teamsUtilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and qualityAbility to translate audit and regulatory requirements into automated technical controls, with clear written and verbal communication that frames complex identity problems for executive audiences