Director of Engineering, Custody

Coinbase Careers Page

5h•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. The Institutional Product Group enables the foundations of Coinbase's institutional business supporting thousands of large financial institutions. We enable institutions to custody their digital assets and participate in the crypto economy in a secure and safe way. We take pride in building a scalable & secure crypto platform supporting hundreds of assets and enabling crypto participation with staking, governance and web3 gateways. The team has interesting work on building cutting-edge crypto technologies, scalable infrastructure and UI surfaces across web, mobile and browser extensions in a fast-paced industry with an opportunity to build several new initiatives. The Coinbase Custody team is the world’s most trusted and secure institutional digital asset storage and services platform, seeking to continue the Coinbase Institutional mission by building and scaling the #1 crypto platform for trading, custody and financing. Specifically, the Custody team is currently searching for an Engineering Leader to help drive trust and scale in the platform.

Requirements

Institutional-Scale Leadership: Proven experience leading product engineering teams, ideally Institutional/Enterprise experience
Security-First Mindset: Deep understanding of secure system design
Distributed Systems Expertise: Strong technical background in building highly available, transactional systems.
Operational Rigor: Experience managing 24/7 mission-critical systems where manual intervention is high-risk and automation is essential.
Organizational Scaling: Track record of scaling teams and mentoring Senior/Staff Engineers in a fast-paced environment.
Executive Influence: Ability to translate complex blockchain and security concepts into business risks and opportunities for the executive team and external regulators.

Nice To Haves

Crypto Native: Deep understanding of blockchain protocols, smart contracts, and the nuances of various consensus mechanisms (PoS vs. PoW).
Regulated Environments: Experience working within NYDFS, BitLicense, or SEC/FINRA regulated frameworks.

Responsibilities

Secure and Scale Trust: Establish and scale Coinbase Custody into the world’s most trusted and secure institutional digital asset storage and services platform.
Institutional Innovation: Define and execute a cohesive roadmap that includes storage, staking, governance, and institutional DeFi integration.
Operational Excellence: Lead the transition from a high-security storage solution to a seamless, high-availability financial engine that supports the world’s largest institutional clients.
Regulatory Leadership: Ensure the platform remains the gold standard for compliance, meeting rigorous global regulatory requirements (SOC, NYDFS, etc.).
Strategic Architecture: Blend deep security expertise with scalable system design—setting the direction for cold/warm storage architectures while aligning with Product, Legal, and Compliance.
Platform Reliability & Security: Maintain 99.99% uptime and zero-security-incident status for the world’s largest crypto-custody platform, ensuring institutional-grade resilience.
Market-Leading Feature Delivery: Successfully launch and scale a suite of tier-one features designed for asset issuers, VCs, and hedge funds, and other Institutional customers.
Efficiency & Throughput: Improve the efficiency of asset movements and settlement times through automation, state of the art signing key management while maintaining strict security protocols.
Scale the Organization: Grow the Custody Engineering team, focusing on hiring security-minded backend engineers and building a robust middle-management layer.
Regulatory & Audit Success: Lead the technical execution for successful SOC1/SOC2 audits and state/federal regulatory exams with zero major findings.