Staff Software Engineer, EAA CX

About the role

This role involves leading the technical direction for Control Center, a critical platform at Coinbase that manages customer data operations. The Staff Software Engineer will be responsible for architecting and delivering foundational platform capabilities, such as tool registries, AI orchestration layers, and risk-based access automation. A key aspect of the work is enabling other product groups to build securely and efficiently on Control Center.

A primary focus for this position is transforming Control Center into an AI-agent-ready, headless operations platform. This involves designing and implementing new constructs for procedures, guardrails for AI agents, human-in-the-loop orchestration, and evaluation frameworks to ensure secure autonomous operations. The engineer will also build and maintain highly reliable and secure distributed backend services, defining SLOs, instrumentation, and incident response for Tier-1 systems.

Success in this role means driving technical initiatives from conception to production, ensuring high-quality code, and mentoring other engineers. The Staff Software Engineer will partner with various engineering and product teams across Coinbase to deliver cross-functional outcomes and establish shared platform primitives. This collaboration aims to eliminate redundant infrastructure and foster a cohesive development environment.

The competitive annual salary for this role ranges from $218,025 to $256,500 USD.

Skills that matter here

• backend service design: This role requires deep proficiency in designing and implementing robust backend services for large-scale, high-traffic distributed systems.
• API development: The engineer will develop various APIs (gRPC, MCP, GraphQL) to support the Control Center platform and its integrations.
• microservices architectures: Experience with scalable microservices architectures is essential for evolving the Control Center platform.
• AWS: Hands-on experience with AWS is necessary for managing cloud-native infrastructure components.
• Kubernetes: The role involves working with Kubernetes for container orchestration within the cloud environment.
• Go: Proficiency in Go is required for building and maintaining backend services, with a willingness to also work with Python.

Who this role suits

• An engineer with a demonstrated history of architecting and delivering large-scale, high-traffic distributed systems.
• Someone who can independently lead complex, multi-team technical initiatives from initial concept to production.
• A professional with a deep appreciation for security controls, access management, and data governance in regulated financial environments.
• An individual experienced in building or integrating with agentic AI systems, including LLM orchestration and evaluation frameworks.

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.