Senior Staff Software Engineer - Blockchain Platform

About the role

This Senior Staff Software Engineer will lead the technical direction for Coinbase's Blockchain Platform, which underpins all crypto transactions across its products. The role focuses on evolving foundational infrastructure like nodes, indexers, and wallet systems to handle millions of transactions securely and efficiently. Success in this position means architecting scalable solutions that support new blockchain networks and products, ensuring reliability and cost-effectiveness at a global scale.

The Blockchain Platform team is responsible for connecting Coinbase's offerings to the broader crypto economy. This involves operating and enhancing systems that power various crypto actions, from sending and receiving to staking and bridging, across over 60 blockchain networks. The team is currently rearchitecting its wallet stack, indexing infrastructure, and asset identifier systems to prepare for significant future growth and performance demands.

A key aspect of this role is driving large, cross-team architectural projects, translating complex challenges into clear, actionable milestones. The engineer will also establish technical standards for security and reliability across all crypto asset operations, including transaction finality and key management. This involves using data to identify platform gaps and leading improvements in reliability and efficiency, including exploring AI-native approaches to reduce operational burdens.

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

Skills that matter here

• high-throughput transaction systems: This role requires experience with systems that process many transactions, ensuring accuracy and financial precision.
• staking infrastructure: Familiarity with the systems that support staking crypto assets is relevant for this platform role.
• bridging protocols: Understanding how different blockchain networks connect is important for developing integrated crypto infrastructure.
• tokenization systems: Experience with systems that create or manage digital tokens will be valuable.
• AI or agent-based automation: The role involves applying AI to automate tasks and reduce operational effort within platform and infrastructure contexts.
• blockchain protocols: Hands-on experience with specific blockchain technologies like EVM chains or Solana at a technical level is a plus.

Who this role suits

• You are a highly technical leader who thrives on defining long-term engineering visions.
• You are comfortable breaking down ambiguous, large-scale architectural challenges into clear, measurable outcomes.
• You are passionate about the crypto space and driven to build industry-leading infrastructure.
• You have a track record of making platform-level impact across multiple teams in a high-scale technology environment.

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.