Staff Software Engineer

Coinbase; Cheyenne (WY); Remote; USD 218,000 - 257,000; Full time

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead AI maturity and developer-experience efforts across the Customer Experience engineering squads. You will architect scalable backend services on Coinbase's AI platform, improve reliability and observability, and guide build-versus-buy decisions for AI tooling.

You will collaborate with engineering leadership to deliver high-impact, secure, compliant, and production-ready systems across global teams, using Go and Python, on AWS and Kubernetes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with distributed systems experience.
• Backend service design and API development with modern stacks.
• Experience with cloud-native infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes).
• Security controls and data governance in regulated environments.
• Experience with agentic AI systems and AI tooling.

Responsibilities

• Own AI maturity and developer-experience roadmap across CX engineering squads.
• Lead platform excellence to improve reliability and observability.
• Define build-versus-buy strategy for AI tooling and developer experience.
• Provide staff-level architectural coverage across squads.
• Build and maintain reliable distributed backend services with SLOs.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Backend API development

Go

Python

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD pipelines

Security & compliance

Agentic AI systems

GRPC

GraphQL

Kafka

NoSQL databases

SQL databases

Tools

Kafka

MQ

SQL databases

NoSQL databases

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.

Staff Software Engineer

The Customer Experience sub-organization within Coinbase's Enterprise Applications and Architecture group builds and operates the secure, Tier-1 platforms that power internal investigative and support workflows for approximately 7,000 specialists across CX, Compliance, Legal, Global Investigations, and Trust and Risk. As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll operate as a technical anchor across 8 globally distributed EAA-CX engineering squads, identifying high-leverage AI and developer-experience opportunities, architecting solutions on Coinbase's production AI infrastructure, and driving platform excellence that raises Tier-1 engineering quality across the portfolio.

What you'll do:

• Own the EAA-CX AI maturity and developer-experience roadmap in partnership with engineering leadership, embedding with squads to surface opportunities, prototyping on Coinbase's existing AI platform, and driving adoption through working demos and feedback loops.

• Lead platform excellence workstreams that improve reliability, observability, change-failure rate, and operational readiness for Tier-1 systems, partnering with engineering managers to ensure practices persist on the teams.

• Define build-versus-buy strategy for developer-experience and AI tooling across EAA-CX, evaluating what to build internally, adopt from partner teams, procure from vendors, or retire.

• Provide Staff-level architectural coverage across squads facing complex challenges, ramping in to land architecture or delivery and ramping off while maintaining portfolio-wide coherence.

• Build highly reliable, secure distributed backend services with full SLO ownership, observability, and incident response, ensuring automated outputs and production changes are traceable, reviewable, and safe in a regulated environment.

Required Skills and Experience:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with a demonstrated track record architecting and delivering large-scale distributed systems, including deep proficiency in backend service design, API development (gRPC, MCP, GraphQL), and scalable microservices architectures.

• Proven ability to independently lead ambiguous, high-impact technical initiatives from whiteboard to production across multi-team problem spaces, writing high-quality, well-tested code that sets the standard for others.

• Strong experience with cloud-native infrastructure including AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, event-driven architectures (Kafka, MQ), distributed caching, and SQL or NoSQL databases.

• Track record building secure, compliant internal tools or platforms with deep appreciation for security controls, access management, audit logging, and data governance in a regulated environment.

• Experience building or integrating with agentic AI systems including MCP servers, LLM orchestration layers, RAG pipelines, HITL workflows, or evaluation and guardrail frameworks, with proficiency in Go and willingness to work across Python.

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

Job #: P67493

*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):

$218,025—$256,500 USD

• *Application Limit: *Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.

• *Equal Opportunity Employer: *Coinbase is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information. Applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

• *US Applicants: *View Employee Rights, Know Your Rights, and E-Verify Notice of Participation.

• *Accommodations: *If you are an individual with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation, email us your request and contact info at accommodations[at]coinbase.com.Need screen reading technology? Click here to download a free compatible screen reader and view the tutorial.

• *Data Privacy & Arbitration: *By submitting your application, you agree to our Candidate Privacy Notice. US applicants: By submitting your application, you agree to Arbitration of Disputes.