Senior Staff Software Engineer - Blockchain Platform

About the role

This role focuses on leading the technical direction for Coinbase's Blockchain Platform, which underpins all crypto actions across its products. The platform manages foundational infrastructure like nodes, indexers, wallets, and orchestration systems, supporting over 60 blockchain networks and 300 tokens. The work involves rearchitecting key components for scalability, extensibility, and performance, while also exploring new areas like Yield and Stablecoins.

The Senior Staff Software Engineer will be responsible for defining multi-quarter technical strategies across various platform components, including nodes, wallets, indexing, and asset lifecycle. This includes architecting and evolving core infrastructure to ensure high availability, low latency, cost efficiency, and security at a global scale. A key aspect is leading the design and rollout of major cross-team architectural initiatives, translating complex problems into clear, measurable outcomes.

Success in this position means setting and enforcing technical standards for correctness, security, and reliability in all crypto asset operations, such as transaction finality and key management. The role also involves driving engineering efficiency through standards for testing, quality, and automation, and championing AI-native approaches to reduce operational burden. Representing the Blockchain Platform in executive forums and aligning stakeholders on strategic technical bets is also crucial.

The annual base salary for this role ranges from $253,895 to $298,700 USD, with total compensation potentially including equity and bonus.

Skills that matter here

• high-throughput transaction systems: The role requires experience with systems that handle many transactions, emphasizing auditability, idempotency, and financial precision for crypto operations.
• staking infrastructure, bridging protocols, or tokenization systems: Familiarity with these specific blockchain components is relevant to the platform's current and future initiatives.
• AI or agent-based automation: Experience applying these technologies to reduce operational tasks in platform or infrastructure contexts is sought to improve efficiency.
• high-scale technology company: A background in a large technology company is needed, demonstrating a history of making significant platform-level impact across multiple teams.
• blockchain protocols: Hands-on experience with specific blockchain protocols at the node or protocol level is a beneficial skill for this role.

Who this role suits

• You are a technical leader who can define and drive long-term engineering strategies.
• You thrive in an intense, high-bar environment and are motivated to push past perceived limits.
• You have a strong background in architecting and evolving complex, high-scale infrastructure.
• You are adept at breaking down ambiguous problems into clear, actionable plans and securing stakeholder buy-in.

From the employer

• Define and drive the multi-quarter technical strategy for Blockchain Platform, spanning nodes, wallets, indexing, and asset lifecycle, to support new chains, new products, and significant growth in onchain transaction volume.
• Architect and evolve the core Blockchain Platform infrastructure - nodes, indexers, wallet systems, and liquidity primitives - for high availability, low latency, cost efficiency, and security at global scale.
• Lead end-to-end design and rollout of large, cross-team architectural initiatives (e.g., wallet stack rearchitecture, indexing stack redesign, asset identifier system), breaking high ambiguity into clear milestones and measurable outcomes.
• Set and enforce technical standards for correctness, security, and reliability across all crypto asset operations, including transaction finality, key management, reconciliation, and failure-mode handling for all onchain flows.
• Drive engineering efficiency across the org - defining standards for testing, quality, automation, and observability, and championing AI-native approaches that reduce operational burden and enable agents to serve as front-line operators.
• Use data and observability signals (e.g., transaction success rates, node reliability, indexing latency, on-call burden) to identify structural platform gaps and lead systematic reliability and efficiency improvements.
• Represent Blockchain Platform in executive and cross-org forums, clearly communicating tradeoffs, aligning stakeholders on strategy, and securing buy-in for high-impact technical bets including emerging areas like Yield and Stablecoins.

• Experience with high-throughput transaction systems requiring strong auditability, idempotency, and financial precision.
• Familiarity with staking infrastructure, bridging protocols, or tokenization systems.
• Experience applying AI or agent-based automation to reduce operational toil in platform or infrastructure contexts.
• Background at a high-scale technology company with a track record of platform-level impact across multiple teams.

Nice to haves:

• Hands-on experience with one or more blockchain protocols at the node or protocol level (e.g., EVM chains, Solana, Bitcoin, L2s).

• 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.