Data Protection Engineer

Coinbase Careers Page

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

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 are looking for a Data Protection Engineer (L4) to help implement and maintain our data protection capabilities, ensuring the Coinbase ecosystem remains resilient against security threats. You will contribute to our data protection strategy, helping to balance strong security controls with the speed of a decentralized tech environment. You will focus on automating data protection operations, utilizing tools including LLMs and agentic AI, to build scalable Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions. You will work with other teams to mitigate risk and ensure compliance with global regulations.

Requirements

You are an experienced security engineer in the data protection space who can deliver measurable results
You have the technical acumen to solve operational issues with an engineering solution
You have direct experience testing, tuning, and implementing data prevention controls across multiple OS stack
You are comfortable manipulating and orchestrating controls to address multiple operating systems (iOS / Chrome) and decentralized datasets
You are adept at creating scalable processes, automating where possible, and leveraging ML/AI where feasible to maximize efficiency
You can be trusted to be discreet and thoughtful while working cross functionally to mitigate risk
You are actively aware of the insider threat landscape, and understand the legal, regulatory, and ethical considerations of working with sensitive data across a global enterprise
You have experience working and building Insider Threat technologies (such as Security Information Event Management - SIEM, User Behavioral Analytics - UBA, Data Loss Prevention - DLP) and an understanding of investigations and/or the intelligence cycle
You have excellent verbal and written communication skills. Other team members ask for your input to communicate clearly and concisely and you are comfortable composing briefs and assessments consumed by leadership
Business acumen: Proven understanding of business dynamics, goals, and product strategy. Knowledge of how Security fits into Coinbase’s overall business.
The ability to balance business needs, a sense of urgency, conflicting constraints, and shipping high quality and pragmatic solutions in a fast-moving and quickly-growing company.
Demonstrates the ability to responsibly use generative AI tools and copilots (e.g., LibreChat, Gemini, Glean) in daily workflows, continuously learn as tools evolve, and apply human‑in‑the‑loop practices to deliver business‑ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in efficiency, cost, and quality.

Nice To Haves

3+ years of security engineering experience solving complex security challenges across enterprise-wide DLP Programs
Solving operational problems leveraging engineering / automation first mindset
Experience in Web3 and crypto forward organizations or traditional financial institutions

Responsibilities

Support and expand data loss prevention capabilities to protect Coinbase ecosystem from sophisticated data security incidents
Support execution of the long term strategy for the Data prevention program to harden security posture against data security threats
Implement and maintain complex designs/controls across a decentralized tech environment to promote security without impeding the speed of business
Implement and deploy Data Protection tools and technologies in concert with cross functional teams (ie. endpoint security, information technology, and others)
Demonstrate operational efficiency across a wide array of DLP Engineering & Operations leveraging LLMs and agentic AI
Bring an automation first mindset to champion and drive a more streamlined and scalable approach towards DLP operations
Produce quantitative and qualitative metrics to apprise Data Protection Leadership of programmatic impact and challenges
Collaborate across Security and Privacy Teams and lead cross functional data protection initiatives
Collaborate with cross functional teams like engineering, product development, compliance to ensure timely remediation
Work in concert with risk teams to measure control effectiveness and address changes in laws/regulations globally