Ready to be pushed beyond what you think you’re capable of?
At Coinbase, our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world. It’s a massive, ambitious opportunity that demands the best of us, every day, as we build the emerging onchain platform — and with it, the future global financial system.
To achieve our mission, we’re seeking a very specific candidate. We want someone who is passionate about our mission and who believes in the power of crypto and blockchain technology to update the financial system. We want someone who is eager to leave their mark on the world, who relishes the pressure and privilege of working with high caliber colleagues, and who actively seeks feedback to keep leveling up. We want someone who will run towards, not away from, solving the company’s hardest problems.
Our work culture is intense and isn’t for everyone. But if you want to build the future alongside others who excel in their disciplines and expect the same from you, there’s no better place to be.
While many roles at Coinbase are remote-first, we are not remote-only. In-person participation is required throughout the year. Team and company-wide offsites are held multiple times annually to foster collaboration, connection, and alignment. Attendance is expected and fully supported.
We’re hiring a Senior Staff Software Engineer to join the Identity team within our Platform Product Group. The Platform Product Group builds the trusted, scalable, and compliant foundations that power multiple Coinbase products—so customers experience a consistent, high-quality “front door” into the crypto economy.
About the team:
The Identity engineering team owns core identity capabilities across onboarding, verification, and access. This role sits at the center of our Onboarding & KYC platform—one of the most critical domains at Coinbase, directly impacting user conversion, regulatory compliance, and platform trust.
What you’ll be doing (ie. job duties):
- Own the Onboarding & KYC platform end-to-end: Serve as the primary technical owner for the domain, including how onboarding and identity signals integrate with adjacent products, services, and data platforms across Coinbase.
- Architect the next generation platform: Lead a multi-quarter rebuild modernizing legacy systems into a geo-specific architecture that scales globally and supports evolving compliance requirements.
- Set the technical vision and standards: Act as the technical authority for this area, driving domain abstraction, defining the target architecture, and expanding the platform beyond KYC into a broader onboarding foundation that can support new product offerings and use cases.
- Drive reliability and zero-downtime evolution: Design for high availability, operational integrity, and safe migrations—ensuring critical identity flows remain resilient while systems are modernized.
- Improve customer experience through platform design: Reduce onboarding friction while maintaining strong compliance controls, optimizing for conversion, correctness, and consistency across regions.
- Innovate beyond today’s roadmap: Explore and prototype future-forward directions such as Agentic Onboarding (AI-driven) and On-Chain KYC, including how emerging AI capabilities should reshape identity systems and what an “AI-proof” identity platform looks like.
- Cultural and technical leadership: Mentor Staff engineers, raise the bar on engineering and operational excellence, and introduce new technical paradigms and best practices.
- Influence cross-functionally: Partner with Product, Design, Compliance, Legal, and other engineering orgs to align on requirements, tradeoffs, and sequencing for complex, high-stakes initiatives.
What we look for in you:
- 12+ years of backend engineering experience, with a track record of technical leadership on mission-critical platforms
- Strong system design and coding ability; proven experience operating high-availability, high-correctness services
- Demonstrated success migrating legacy systems to modern architectures with minimal/zero downtime
- Deep understanding of distributed systems, service boundaries, reliability, observability, and operational rigor
- Strong written and verbal communication; able to drive alignment across senior stakeholders
- Comfort leading large, ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives and owning outcomes end-to-end
- Experience mentoring and leveling up senior engineers through direct, actionable feedback
Nice to haves:
- Experience in Identity, Authentication/Authorization, Onboarding, KYC, Fraud/Risk, or Compliance platforms
- Interest in how AI will change identity/onboarding workflows; experience integrating AI into product/platform systems is a plus
- Background in fast-paced, high-growth internet/software environments
Job #P74261
Please be advised that each candidate may submit a maximum of four applications within any 30-day period. We encourage you to carefully evaluate how your skills and interests align with Coinbase's roles before applying.
Commitment to Equal Opportunity
Coinbase is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation or any other basis protected by applicable law. Coinbase will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. For US applicants, you may view the Employee Rights and the Know Your Rights notices by clicking on their corresponding links. Additionally, Coinbase participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law.
Coinbase is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please contact us at accommodations[at]coinbase.com to let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. For quick access to screen reading technology compatible with this site click here to download a free compatible screen reader (free step by step tutorial can be found here).
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Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. Our full notice outlining how data will be processed as part of the application procedure for applicable locations is available here. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. For US applicants only, by submitting your application you are agreeing to arbitration of disputes as outlined here.
AI Disclosure
For select roles, Coinbase is piloting an AI tool based on machine learning technologies to conduct initial screening interviews to qualified applicants. The tool simulates realistic interview scenarios and engages in dynamic conversation. A human recruiter will review your interview responses, provided in the form of a voice recording and/or transcript, to assess them against the qualifications and characteristics outlined in the job description.
For select roles, Coinbase is also piloting an AI interview intelligence platform to transcribe and summarize interview notes, allowing our interviewers to fully focus on you as the candidate.
The above pilots are for testing purposes and Coinbase will not use AI to make decisions impacting employment. To request a reasonable accommodation due to disability, please contact accommodations[at]coinbase.com
