Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Consumer - Risk)

Coinbase

14h•Remote

About The Position

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Risk Engineering team within the Consumer & Business group, you'll serve as the technical anchor for the team that protects Coinbase and millions of users from fraud, financial crime, and financial risk. You'll define multi-quarter technical strategies, shape the architecture of our most critical risk systems, and lead the engineering team that builds real-time detection, decisioning, and mitigation infrastructure operating at the scale and speed of crypto markets. Your architectural decisions will determine how effectively we protect users and the business as Coinbase scales globally. Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called “surges.”

Requirements

8+ years of backend software engineering experience with significant experience architecting and developing high-throughput, low-latency production systems at scale
Deep expertise in backend systems design (microservices, event-driven architectures, REST/GraphQL APIs) with a track record of building systems that meet high-availability and correctness requirements
Proven ability to define and execute multi-quarter technical strategies, influence engineering direction across teams, and translate ambiguous problem spaces into clear, actionable technical plans
Experience architecting solutions for complex, high-stakes domains where correctness, latency, and reliability are critical, delivering impactful systems that operate at scale
Demonstrated success raising the technical bar for a team through architectural guidance, engineering culture improvements, and mentorship of senior engineers with measurable outcomes
Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end technical architecture of Coinbase's Risk Platform, including real-time fraud detection engines, risk decisioning systems, financial risk monitoring, and mitigation infrastructure operating at high throughput with low latency and 24x7 availability
Shape multi-quarter technical strategies for the Risk Platform, identifying opportunities to simplify complexity, improve reliability, reduce fraud losses, and scale risk capabilities across new products, asset classes, and jurisdictions
Lead the design and implementation of critical risk systems, translating ambiguous, high-stakes business requirements into scalable, resilient architectures that balance fraud prevention with user experience
Partner cross-functionally with Data Science, ML, Product, Compliance, and senior leadership to define the roadmap and ensure the risk platform evolves ahead of emerging threats and regulatory requirements
Build AI-native risk systems that leverage fleets of agents to automate complex detection and response workflows, significantly reducing the need for manual intervention
Strengthen the team's technical capability through architecture reviews, code reviews, engineering standards for quality and performance, and hands-on mentorship of engineers at all levels