Senior Staff Software Engineer, Platform - IAM

Coinbase; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity eligibility

Annual bonus potential

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer (Uber Tech Lead) for Identity & Access Management within Platform. Own the technical strategy unifying human, AI, service and workload identity. Drive architecture across numerous pods and enable secure, scalable access across 700+ systems.

You will mentor engineers, influence tech direction at senior levels, and partner with security, compliance and product leadership to align automated controls with audit requirements.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience on a platform spanning multiple teams.
• Deep IAM expertise across workforce identity, authorization, access lifecycle or non-human identity.
• Production Go experience and distributed systems design on AWS.
• Fluency in identity protocols and standards (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, SCIM).

Responsibilities

• Own the multi-year technical strategy for IAM end to end across platforms and teams.
• Drive architecture decisions, standards, and integration contracts across pods.
• Develop adoption plans for 700+ systems, including migration paths and build-vs-buy decisions.
• Translate audit and regulatory requirements into automated controls and evidence.
• Lead data model and tooling for access visibility and secure-by-default workflows.
• Mentor staff and grow the identity domain expertise across the org.

Job description

Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? At Coinbase, 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

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.

What you'll do:

• 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.

Required Skills and Experience:

• 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 teams.


• 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 scale.


• 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).


• Proven 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 problems.


• Ability to translate audit and regulatory requirements into automated technical controls, with clear written and verbal communication that frames complex identity problems for executive audiences.


• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Pay Transparency Notice:

Base salary varies by location (see range below). Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility, and benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k)).

Annual base salary range (excluding equity and bonus):

\