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Coinbase is building the future of institutional trading as part of the Institutional Everything Exchange, powering the systems that let the world's largest financial institutions trade across markets with speed, depth, and trust. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Exchange team, you'll set the architectural direction for the matching engine, order management, market data, and unified trading systems that clear billions of dollars in daily volume. You'll operate as the most senior technical voice across multiple teams, making the calls on latency, correctness, and resilience that everything else depends on. It's a rare chance to shape a trading platform from the ground up, with the ownership of a startup and the reach of Coinbase.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the technical strategy and architecture for a core Exchange domain, driving multi-quarter initiatives from ambiguity through incremental milestones to delivery.
- Lead the design of ultra-low-latency, event-sourced trading systems spanning matching, risk, and market data across cloud and colocated environments.
- Drive cross-team technical alignment across Exchange, Prime, and Derivatives, securing commitment from senior engineering and product leadership.
- Set and inspect the quality bar across teams - deterministic testing, failover design, incident leadership, and operational standards for 24/7 markets.
- Maintain significant hands-on contribution while leading execution through other senior engineers and tech leads.
- Mentor L5-L6 engineers and build the next rung of technical leadership on a lean, high-leverage team.
Required Skills and Experience
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant ownership of production trading, exchange, or market-data systems at scale.
- Deep expertise in low-latency distributed systems and a backend language such as Java, C++, or Go, with fluency in JVM/Linux performance tuning.
- Demonstrated architectural ownership of an end-to-end trading platform - order management, multi-venue connectivity, and real-time risk - not a single component.
- Proven track record influencing technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority.
- Experience operating latency-sensitive systems in on-prem/colocated and cloud environments, including incident command and safe production change.
- Genuine interest in crypto and institutional markets, with the ability to ramp quickly; deep crypto experience is a plus, not a requirement.
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.
Pay Transparency Notice: 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)
$262,650 - $309,000 USD
- Application Limit: Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.
Applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
- Accommodations: If you are an individual with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation, email us your request and contact info at accommodations[at]coinbase.com. Need screen reading technology? Click here to download a free compatible screen reader and view the tutorial.
- Data Privacy & Arbitration: By submitting your application, you agree to our. US applicants: By submitting your application, you agree to Arbitration of Disputes.
About Coinbase
Coinbase, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam in San Francisco, is the largest US-listed crypto exchange (NASDAQ: COIN) with 110M+ verified users and $300B+ quarterly traded volume. Products span retail, Advanced Trade, Wallet self-custody, Base L2 and institutional prime. Public since 2021, Coinbase drives US policy engagement and proof-of-reserves standards. The bar is high for security thinking, regulatory judgment and shipping consumer-grade crypto products. As the premier US-listed digital asset platform, Coinbase sets industry standards for security architecture, regulatory engagement, and developer-first Web3 ecosystem scaling. Coinbase recruits across engineering, risk compliance, product design, and business development to expand compliant Web3 financial services.