Staff Software Engineer, Backend - Payments Platform

Coinbase

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. Payments Platform is at the front door of Coinbase’s financial ecosystem. Our mission is to move old money into crypto and power financial access and payments for the crypto economy globally. As the bridge between the traditional financial world and the crypto economy, we build and operate the fiat on- and off-ramps and payment services that let Coinbase’s customer-facing products deliver reliable, seamless payment processing and connect customer fiat funds into crypto. We’re seeking a deep technical leader to define the engineering vision for Payments, shape architectural cohesion across our global payment rails and funds-flow systems, drive platform-level reliability and cost efficiency, and lead the next evolution of how fiat moves into and out of Coinbase. What you’ll be doing (ie. job duties): * Define and drive the multi‑quarter technical strategy for Payments, spanning rails, orchestration, and transfers, to support new products, geos, and significant growth in payment volume. * Architect and evolve the core Payments platform (rails integrations, routing, and funds-flow services) for high availability, low latency, and cost efficiency at global scale. * Lead end‑to‑end design and rollout of large, cross‑team initiatives (e.g., new global rails, decomp/migrations, resiliency programs), breaking high ambiguity into clear milestones and measurable outcomes. * Set and enforce technical standards for financial correctness across Payments, including idempotency, reconciliation, failure‑mode handling, and auditability for all money‑movement paths. * Partner closely with FinHub, Payments Risk, Regulatory Platform, and Product to design cohesive architectures that balance customer experience, risk controls, compliance, and unit economics. * Provide deep technical mentorship to senior/staff engineers across Payments pods, upleveling system design quality, review rigor, and long‑term maintainability. * Use data and observability signals (e.g., success rates, latency, cost, incident patterns) to identify structural platform gaps and lead systematic reliability and efficiency improvements. * Represent Payments in executive and cross‑org forums, clearly communicating tradeoffs, aligning stakeholders on strategy, and securing buy‑in for high‑impact technical bets. What we look for in you (ie. job requirements):  * 10+ years building and operating large‑scale distributed systems in production. * Deep money‑movement architecture experience (PSPs, ISO 20022, routing, double‑entry, high‑volume payment systems) * Deep expertise in backend programming (e.g., Python, Go, Java) and cloud‑native architecture. * Proven track record designing highly available, high‑performance systems. * Ability to anticipate scaling bottlenecks before they occur and take decisive, proactive measures. * Experience leading cross‑functional technical initiatives and mentoring senior engineers. * Commitment to technical excellence, sharing best practices, and fostering a strong engineering culture. * Ability to distill complex technical concepts into clear and actionable solutions. Nice to haves: * Experience designing and operating ledgering or trading systems at large scale. * Strong financial acumen with experience handling accounting data and financial transactions with high precision and reliability. * Experience collaborating closely with finance and accounting teams.   Job ID: P77633 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. * 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.

Coinbase

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. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Payments Platform team within the Platform group, you'll define the engineering vision for how fiat moves into and out of Coinbase across 50+ countries and payment rails. Payments Platform is the bridge between the traditional financial world and the crypto economy, building the on- and off-ramps that power reliable, seamless payment processing at global scale. You'll shape architectural cohesion across rails, orchestration, and funds-flow systems while driving platform-level reliability, cost efficiency, and readiness for significant volume growth. What you'll do: * Own the multi-quarter technical strategy for Payments spanning rails integrations, orchestration, routing, and funds-flow services to support new products, geographies, and significant growth in payment volume. * Architect the core Payments platform for high availability, low latency, and cost efficiency at global scale, enforcing technical standards for financial correctness including idempotency, reconciliation, failure-mode handling, and auditability across all money-movement paths. * Lead end-to-end design and rollout of large cross-team initiatives (e.g., new global rails, platform decompositions, resiliency programs), breaking high ambiguity into clear milestones and measurable outcomes. * Partner with FinHub, Payments Risk, Regulatory Platform, and Product to design cohesive architectures that balance customer experience, risk controls, compliance, and unit economics. * Drive systematic reliability and efficiency improvements using observability signals (success rates, latency, cost, incident patterns) to identify and resolve structural platform gaps. * Represent Payments in executive and cross-org forums, communicating tradeoffs clearly, aligning stakeholders on strategy, and mentoring senior/staff engineers across pods on system design quality and long-term maintainability. Required Skills and Experience: * 12+ years building and operating large-scale distributed systems in production, with deep money-movement architecture experience (PSPs, ISO 20022, routing, double-entry, high-volume payment systems). * Deep expertise in backend programming (e.g., Go, Python, Java) and cloud-native architecture, with a proven track record designing highly available, high-performance financial systems. * Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional technical initiatives spanning multiple teams, anticipate scaling bottlenecks proactively, and drive systematic platform improvements. * Experience with ledgering, reconciliation, or settlement systems at scale, with strong financial acumen for handling accounting data and transactions with high precision. * Proven ability to distill complex technical concepts into clear, actionable solutions for both engineering and executive audiences. * Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality. #P76681 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. * 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.

Coinbase

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, BACKEND (PLATFORM - IDENTITY IDV) We're hiring a Staff Software Engineer to own the multi-year technical vision and architecture for Coinbase's identity verification platform within Platform. This platform powers the decision engine, vendor orchestration, and infrastructure that determines whether an identity is genuine at global scale - processing approximately 700K verifications per month across Retail, Prime, and Institutional business lines. You'll define the identity trust layer that every Coinbase product will be built on, leading a three-year arc from platform consolidation through vendor-agnostic orchestration to self-serve scalability for the next billion users. What you'll do: * Own end-to-end architecture and technical direction for Coinbase's IDV platform - the decision engine, vendor orchestration layer, and verification infrastructure that all business lines depend on. * Lead platform consolidation by migrating all IDV onto a single decision-engine-driven platform, retiring 100+ legacy rules and fragmented paths, and eliminating single-vendor points of failure. * Design and build vendor-agnostic orchestration with automated, real-time routing and failover that selects the optimal vendor per request and dynamically balances fraud prevention (FAR) against user access (FRR/SCR). * Scale the platform to support every new product, region, and verification modality (document, biometric, liveness) with self-serve configuration so any Coinbase team integrates IDV without a dependency request. * Drive cross-team technical strategy and set the abstractions, APIs, and platform patterns that the broader Identity org builds on, influencing at the Staff level across multiple pods. Required Skills and Experience: * 8+ years of backend software engineering with a track record of deploying and operating large-scale production systems in regulated or fintech environments. * Proven technical leadership owning end-to-end design and delivery of complex, cross-team backend systems, including system design, architecture, API/data-model design, and production rollout. * Deep distributed-systems expertise spanning scalability, reliability, API design, and high availability for Tier-0 services. * Expert-level coding in Go (or equivalent systems language) with hands-on experience in gRPC/microservices, AWS, and Kubernetes. * Experience in identity, KYC, fraud infrastructure, vendor orchestration, or payments domains with the ability to turn ambiguous compliance and platform problems into actionable technical roadmaps. * 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): $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.