Staff Software Engineer, EAA CX

About the role

This Staff Software Engineer role at Coinbase centers on the Control Center platform, a system for secure customer data operations. The position requires leading architectural and delivery efforts for foundational platform capabilities, including tool registries, AI orchestration, and risk-based access automation. A key responsibility is enabling product groups to build on Control Center safely and efficiently, contributing to the platform's overall evolution.

A significant part of the role involves transforming Control Center into a headless operations platform that is ready for AI agents. This includes designing and implementing procedures, guardrails for agents, human-in-the-loop orchestration, and evaluation frameworks to support secure autonomous operations. The engineer will also be responsible for building highly reliable and secure distributed backend services, defining service level objectives, and managing incident response for critical systems.

Success in this position means driving technical direction across the team, collaborating with engineering managers and product teams. The Staff Engineer will author technical design documents, conduct design reviews, and break down complex initiatives into manageable milestones. This role also emphasizes raising engineering quality through code reviews and mentorship, while partnering with various engineering teams to deliver cross-functional outcomes and establish shared platform primitives.

The annual salary for this position ranges from $218,025 to $256,500 USD, with total compensation potentially including equity, bonus eligibility, and benefits.

Skills that matter here

• backend service design: This role requires deep proficiency in designing and architecting large-scale, high-traffic distributed backend services.
• API development: The engineer will be responsible for developing APIs, including gRPC, MCP, and GraphQL, to support platform capabilities.
• microservices architectures: Experience with scalable microservices architectures is essential for evolving the Control Center platform.
• AWS: Hands-on experience with AWS as part of cloud-native infrastructure is a key requirement for this position.
• Kubernetes: The role involves working with Kubernetes for container orchestration within the cloud-native environment.
• Go: Proficiency in Go is required for building and integrating agentic AI systems, with a willingness to also work with Python.

Who this role suits

• A person who thrives on leading complex technical initiatives from conception to production across multiple teams.
• Someone with a strong appreciation for security controls, access management, and data governance in a regulated financial environment.
• An individual who can set high engineering standards through their own code and by mentoring others.
• A candidate who is comfortable with ambiguity and can drive high-impact projects independently.

From the employer

• Own the architecture and delivery of foundational platform capabilities including MCP tool registries, AI orchestration layers, risk-based access automation, and the away-team contribution model that enables product groups to build on Control Center safely and at speed.
• Drive the evolution of Control Center into an AI-agent-ready, headless operations platform by designing and implementing MCP procedure constructs, agentic guardrails, HITL orchestration, and evaluation frameworks for secure autonomous operations.
• Lead technical direction across the team in partnership with the Engineering Manager and Product, authoring TDDs, running design reviews, decomposing complex initiatives into deliverable milestones, and raising the engineering quality bar through code review and mentorship.
• Build highly reliable, secure distributed backend services, owning SLO definitions, observability instrumentation, incident response, and operational readiness for Tier-1 systems serving thousands of internal users and AI agents.
• Partner across EAA engineering, Product Engineering, and Security Engineering teams to deliver cross-functional outcomes and drive shared platform primitives that eliminate duplicated infrastructure.

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with a demonstrated track record architecting and delivering large-scale, high-traffic distributed systems, including deep proficiency in backend service design, API development (gRPC, MCP, GraphQL), and scalable microservices architectures.
• Proven ability to independently lead ambiguous, high-impact technical initiatives from whiteboard to production as a technical owner across complex, multi-team problem spaces, writing high-quality, well-tested code that sets the standard for others.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native infrastructure including AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, event-driven architectures (Kafka, MQ), distributed caching (Redis/Memcached), and SQL or NoSQL databases.
• Track record building secure, compliant internal tools or platforms with deep appreciation for security controls, access management, audit logging, and data governance in a regulated financial services environment.
• Experience building or integrating with agentic AI systems including MCP servers, LLM orchestration layers, RAG pipelines, HITL workflows, or evaluation and guardrail frameworks for production agentic workloads, with proficiency in Go and willingness to work across Python.
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

• Competitive salary ranging from $218,025 to $256,500 USD annually.
• Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility, and benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k)).
• Commitment to Equal Opportunity Employer.