Staff Software Engineer (Tech Lead, Backend - Platform (Overseer)

Coinbase

3h•$218,025 - $256,500•Hybrid

About The Position

Overseer is Coinbase's business integrity layer, making the financial contracts between systems explicit and detecting violations before they become incidents. As a Staff Software Engineer on the Overseer team within the Platform product group, you'll define the long-term technical vision for the platform that enforces correctness across every fund flow Coinbase processes. The gap between "each service works" and "the system is correct" compounds with every product shipped, every market entered, and every settlement mechanism built - you'll ensure Coinbase's correctness infrastructure scales years ahead of that growth.

Requirements

8+ years of experience designing, building, and operating fault-tolerant, high-reliability distributed systems at scale, with a track record of influencing technical direction beyond your immediate team.
Demonstrated experience as a technical lead owning architecture decisions, multi-quarter roadmaps, and cross-team initiatives that impacted organization-level outcomes.
Platform-builder mindset - proven history of building infrastructure other teams depend on, defining platform contracts, and scaling systems that support multiple product areas simultaneously.
Deep expertise in backend programming (e.g., Go, Python, Java) and designing systems for correctness, performance, and scalability in financial or high-stakes distributed environments.
Track record of elevating team and org-level technical quality through mentorship, architectural standards, engineering process improvements, and senior hiring contributions.
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 multi-quarter technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for the Overseer platform, including the invariant definition framework, real-time detection engine, and partner-facing APIs.
Lead the design and execution of company P0 initiatives end-to-end, serving as the senior DRI accountable for delivery, trade-offs, and organizational alignment across product groups.
Drive an architecture where every new product shipped accelerates the correctness layer rather than adding complexity, setting precedents that influence platform design across FinHub.
Shape engineering standards and technical culture across the team and broader FinHub organization through design reviews, architectural RFCs, and raising the bar on code quality and system reliability.
Partner with senior engineering and product leadership across product groups to align correctness requirements, resolve cross-team technical dependencies, and define shared platform contracts.
Build next-generation AI-powered guardrails and real-time invariant enforcement capabilities, identifying opportunities to apply AI-first approaches that scale correctness across Coinbase's expanding fund movement infrastructure.