Staff Software Engineer — Secure Access & Authorization

Coinbase, Inc.; Lincoln (NE); Hybrid; USD 218,000 - 257,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonus eligibility

Medical / Dental / Vision / 401(k)

Job summary

Coinbase is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Access & Authorization team. You will help design and operate authentication and authorization capabilities that balance security with a seamless user experience across Coinbase products and partner integrations.

You will build secure, high-throughput Go/gRPC services and mentor engineers while collaborating with product, security, and infrastructure teams. This role embraces AI responsibly and requires strong writing and communication skills.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend software engineering with Go or similar systems language.
• Design secure APIs for authentication, authorization, sessions, tokens, and OAuth 2.0/OpenID Connect.
• Proficiency with gRPC, Protocol Buffers, and data stores like Redis or DynamoDB; strong observability.
• Strong cross‑functional collaboration and clear communication across teams.
• Responsible use of AI with human oversight to improve workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end design, implementation, and operation of authentication, OAuth, sessions, tokens, 2FA, account recovery, and edge authorization.
• Build secure, low-latency Go and gRPC services used by Coinbase web, mobile, API, and partner experiences; ensure observability and SLOs.
• Lead technical designs for initiatives like signed tokens, passkeys, biometric recovery, device-aware authentication, and mobile OAuth.
• Partner with product, security, fraud, and infra teams to balance conversion, security, and regulatory needs.
• Simplify integration patterns and build self-service tooling for scalable access/authorization adoption.
• Mentor engineers through reviews, pairing, and on-call participation.

Skills

Backend Go

OAuth 2.0

OpenID Connect

gRPC

Distributed systems

Security APIs

Observability

Mentoring

Tools

Redis

DynamoDB

Protocol Buffers

Job description

Coinbase is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Access & Authorization team. You will help design and operate authentication and authorization capabilities that balance security with a seamless user experience across Coinbase products and partner integrations.

You will build secure, high-throughput Go/gRPC services and mentor engineers while collaborating with product, security, and infrastructure teams. This role embraces AI responsibly and requires strong writing and communication skills.