Senior Staff Software Engineer, Onboarding

Coinbase Careers Page

4h•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’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.

Requirements

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

Responsibilities

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.

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