Coinbase

Senior Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform

Coinbase • $253K — $298K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience in large-scale distributed systems architecture.
  • Strong understanding of performance, reliability, and cost management in data systems.
  • Proven ability to transition teams from managed services to self-engineered infrastructures.
  • Experience designing data systems for machine learning and AI workloads at scale.
  • Demonstrated ownership of technical strategy across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

  • Define the technical strategy and architecture for Coinbase's Data Platform.
  • Develop a roadmap focused on cost reduction and infrastructure scalability.
  • Redesign data infrastructure to support AI and ML workloads.
  • Enable near-real-time data availability for internal teams.
  • Promote a builder mindset within the team for scalable data infrastructure.
  • Align technical priorities with cross-functional partners and senior leadership.
  • Represent the Data Platform in organizational strategy discussions.

Benefits

  • Emphasis on team collaboration with multiple annual offsites.
  • Support for in-person participation throughout the year.
  • Culture of continuous feedback and improvement.
  • Opportunity to work with high-caliber professionals in a rapidly evolving industry.
Full Job Description
As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Data Platform team within Platform, you'll define and lead the technical strategy for Coinbase's data infrastructure, spanning ingestion, transformation, warehousing, streaming, and serving systems. This is a foundational role at the intersection of distributed systems, data engineering, and AI-readiness, reporting to the Senior Director of Engineering. You'll set architectural direction, drive multi-quarter roadmaps, and transition the organization from managed-service dependency toward engineering-built, platform-grade infrastructure that powers everything from fraud detection to modern multi-agent AI architectures. **What you'll do:** - Own the technical strategy and architecture for Data Platform, setting direction across data ingestion, transformation, warehousing, streaming, and serving systems while driving engineering-led cost reduction at the infrastructure layer. - Architect data infrastructure to natively support AI and ML workloads, ensuring pipelines, data lake systems, and compute can power ML training, feature stores, real-time inference, and multi-agent AI architectures at scale. - Drive the evolution to near-real-time data availability, enabling downstream teams across Coinbase to act on fresher data for fraud detection, financial reporting, and analytics. - Build alignment and secure commitment from senior leadership and cross-functional partners across product, infrastructure, analytics, ML, privacy, security, and compliance on technical priorities and tradeoffs. - Serve as the primary technical voice for Data Platform in org-wide forums including OKR planning, architecture reviews, and long-term infrastructure strategy, while elevating senior engineering talent. **Required Skills and Experience:** - 12+ years building and operating large-scale distributed data infrastructure, including streaming platforms, data lakes, batch and real-time processing engines, and query/serving layers. - Record of owning end-to-end technical strategy and architecture for an entire data domain across multiple teams, with demonstrated success transitioning organizations from managed-service dependency toward platform-grade, engineering-built infrastructure. - Deep systems thinking across the full data lifecycle, with ability to reason about performance, reliability, cost, security, and privacy at each layer. - Demonstrated experience designing data systems that support ML training pipelines, feature stores, real-time inference, or AI agent workloads at scale, with familiarity across technologies such as CDC, Kafka, Databricks, Snowflake. - Platform mindset and product-manager orientation toward data infrastructure, focused on reducing friction for developer customers and creating compounding leverage. - Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality. Job ID#: P75554 **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): $253,895-$298,700 USD - **Application Limit: **Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.

About Coinbase

Coinbase is a digital currency exchange that allows users to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Coinbase has over 56 million verified users in over 100 countries and has facilitated over $335 billion in trades. Coinbase offers a variety of services, including a cryptocurrency wallet, a trading platform, and an API for developers. Coinbase is known for its user-friendly interface and high level of security. Coinbase has raised over $547 million in funding from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, and the New York Stock Exchange.
Learn more about Coinbase
Size
1,200 employees
Industry
Founded
2012

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at Coinbase

More Enterprise Technology Jobs

Find similar Senior Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform jobs: