Senior Software Engineer, Blockchain Platform Nodes

About the role

As a Senior Software Engineer at Coinbase, you will focus on optimizing blockchain nodes to ensure high performance and reliability across various protocols. This role involves deep performance analysis, resource consumption diagnostics, and implementing system-level fixes to maintain service level objectives.

You will collaborate with various teams to build observability tools, automate failover capabilities, and drive cost-efficient initiatives across the node fleet. Success in this position means delivering measurable improvements in infrastructure efficiency while supporting protocol upgrades with a performance-first approach.

The base salary for this role ranges from $186,065 to $218,900 USD, with additional compensation potentially including equity and bonuses.

Skills that matter here

• Go: This role requires proficiency in Go for backend programming and systems tooling.
• pprof: Experience with pprof is necessary for profiling and optimizing performance.
• Datadog: Datadog is used for monitoring and observability of the blockchain node performance.
• Prometheus: Prometheus is part of the stack for monitoring and ensuring system reliability.
• Grafana: Grafana is utilized for visualizing performance metrics and health checks.

Who this role suits

• Has a strong background in software engineering with a focus on systems-level performance.
• Thrives in high-pressure environments and is driven to achieve measurable outcomes.
• Possesses experience with distributed systems and blockchain technology.
• Demonstrates a proactive approach to problem-solving and resource optimization.

From the employer

• Own deep performance analysis and optimization across the blockchain node stack, diagnosing root causes of resource consumption and implementing system-level fixes that reduce infrastructure spend while maintaining reliability SLOs.
• Build observability, health-check, and automated failover capabilities for blockchain nodes, ensuring the team can detect degradation and respond proactively rather than reactively scaling resources.
• Drive a right-sizing initiative across the node fleet, profiling workloads, identifying over-provisioned instances, and establishing capacity models that balance cost efficiency with headroom for reliability.
• Partner with protocol integration engineers, wallet teams, and indexer teams to extend performance improvements across the full blockchain platform stack, not just the node layer.
• Lead the definition and implementation of SLOs and SLIs for node services, creating the measurement framework that gives the team confidence in reliability without relying on over-provisioning.
• Support protocol upgrades and node operations with a performance-first lens, ensuring new blockchain versions are validated for resource efficiency and regression-tested before production rollout.

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering with deep expertise in systems-level performance analysis, profiling, and optimization of production infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience operating distributed systems at scale, including diagnosing resource bottlenecks, tuning service performance, and managing capacity across heterogeneous workloads.
• Proficiency in backend programming (Go preferred) and systems tooling for profiling, tracing, and observability (e.g., pprof, Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana).
• Track record of reducing infrastructure costs through engineering optimization rather than simply scaling resources, with measurable outcomes (e.g., cost reduction percentage, latency improvements).
• Experience with blockchain nodes, consensus protocols, or crypto infrastructure is strongly preferred; familiarity with how different protocols behave under load and during upgrades.
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

• 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): $186,065 — $218,900 USD.
• 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.