Staff Software Engineer, Backend - Payments Platform

About the role

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the architecture and technical direction of the Payments platform. This role involves owning the multi-year technical strategy, building and evolving distributed systems, driving engineering quality, partnering cross-functionally, and leading high-stakes scaling and reliability initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Own the multi-year technical strategy and architecture for the Payments platform, defining the roadmap for scaling integrations, routing, and funds-flow systems across global markets.
• Build and evolve distributed systems that process high-volume payment traffic, designing for fault isolation, graceful degradation, observability, and clear Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for Tier-0/Tier-1 services.
• Drive engineering quality by establishing paved roads, shared frameworks, and coding standards that elevate the technical bar across the Payments team and adjacent orgs.
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Risk, Compliance, and Operations to translate ambiguous business requirements into well-scoped technical solutions that balance speed, safety, and regulatory needs.
• Lead high-stakes scaling and reliability initiatives, anticipating bottlenecks before they occur and driving systematic improvements from incident postmortems.
• Strengthen team capabilities through hands-on mentorship, design reviews, and architectural guidance that accelerate the growth of engineers across the team.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, including hands-on experience building payment systems, financial infrastructure, or high-volume transactional platforms.
• Demonstrated track record of architecting and delivering fault-tolerant, highly reliable distributed systems at scale, with experience processing billions of dollars in transaction volume.
• Led platform-building efforts that transformed fragmented services into coherent, reusable systems (e.g., shared frameworks, unified APIs, multi-tenant architectures).
• Pioneered technical direction across teams and organizations without direct authority, including representing your area in org-level architecture and strategy forums.
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Qualifications

• Experience owning production reliability, leading high-severity incident response, and driving systemic improvements across multiple teams or domains.
• History of influencing technical direction across teams and organizations without direct authority, including representing your area in org-level architecture and strategy forums.
• Proven experience translating ambiguous business requirements into well-scoped technical solutions that balance speed, safety, and regulatory needs.

Skills

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to think strategically about long-term system architecture.
• Experience with distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native technologies.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence and work effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Ability to manage complex projects and prioritize tasks under tight deadlines.

Benefits

At Coinbase, we offer a competitive total compensation package, including a range of annual base salaries (excluding equity and bonus) from $218,025 USD to $256,500 USD, depending on location. We also provide comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and a 401(k) plan. Additionally, we offer a variety of perks such as flexible work arrangements, professional development opportunities, and a supportive company culture.

Pay

Annual base salary range (excluding equity and bonus): $218,025 USD - $256,500 USD

Schedule

Remote-first, with quarterly in-person working sessions called "surges."