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Staff Software Enginer, Backend - Payments Platform

Coinbase· Payments
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Remote$218k - $256.5kFull-timePosted today

About the role

Staff software engineer role in Coinbase Payments team, owning architecture and technical direction for systems that power fiat on- and off-ramps, processing billions in transaction volume across global markets. Focus on scalable, reliable distributed systems, with cross-functional collaboration and mentorship.

Responsibilities

  • Own the multi-year technical strategy and architecture for the Payments platform, defining the roadmap for scaling integrations, routing, and funds-flow systems across global markets.
  • Build and evolve distributed systems that process high-volume payment traffic, designing for fault isolation, graceful degradation, observability, and clear SLOs for Tier-0/Tier-1 services.
  • Drive engineering quality by establishing paved roads, shared frameworks, and coding standards that elevate the technical bar across the Payments team and adjacent orgs.
  • Partner cross-functionally with Product, Risk, Compliance, and Operations to translate ambiguous business requirements into well-scoped technical solutions that balance speed, safety, and regulatory needs.
  • Lead high-stakes scaling and reliability initiatives, anticipating bottlenecks before they occur and driving systematic improvements from incident postmortems.
  • Strengthen team capabilities through hands-on mentorship, design reviews, and architectural guidance that accelerate the growth of engineers across the team.

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of experience in software engineering, including hands-on experience building payment systems, financial infrastructure, or high-volume transactional platforms.
  • Demonstrated track record of architecting and delivering fault-tolerant, highly reliable distributed systems at scale, with experience processing billions of dollars in transaction volume.
  • Led platform-building efforts that transformed fragmented services into coherent, reusable systems (e.g., shared frameworks, unified APIs, multi-tenant architectures).
  • Proven experience owning production reliability, leading high-severity incident response, and driving systemic improvements across multiple teams or domains.
  • History of influencing technical direction across teams and organizations without direct authority, including representing your area in org-level architecture and strategy forums.
  • Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Skills

Required:Distributed systems designProduction reliabilityLeadership without authority

Benefits

  • Medical Plan, Dental and Vision Plan with generous employee contributions
  • Health Savings Account with company contributions each pay period
  • Disability and Life Insurance
  • 401(k) plan with company match
  • Wellness Stipend
  • Mobile/Internet Reimbursement
  • Volunteer Time Off
  • Fertility Counseling and Benefits
  • Generous Time off/Leave Policy
  • The option of getting paid in digital currency
Last updated Oct 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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About Coinbase

Buy, sell, and manage cryptocurrencies.

Founded in June of 2012, Coinbase is a digital currency wallet and platform where merchants and consumers can transact with new digital currencies like bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin. Our vision is to bring more innovation, efficiency, and equality of opportunity to the world by building an open financial system. Our first step on that journey is making digital currency accessible and approachable for everyone. Two principles guide our efforts. First, be the most trusted company in our domain. Second, create user-focused products that are easier and more intuitive to use.

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