Senior Staff Software Engineer, Payments

Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? At Coinbase, we are uncompromising on our mission to increase economic freedom. The bar is high, the environment is intense, and we like it that way. This isn't a place for complacency, it’s a place to be pushed past your perceived limits. If you're ready to build the future of finance alongside people who refuse to settle for "good enough," you belong here. Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called “surges.” learn more about working at Coinbase.

Payments Platform is at the front door of Coinbase’s financial ecosystem. Our mission is to move old money into crypto and power financial access and payments for the crypto economy globally. As the bridge between the traditional financial world and the crypto economy, we build and operate the fiat on- and off-ramps and payment services that let Coinbase’s customer-facing products deliver reliable, seamless payment processing and connect customer fiat funds into crypto.

We’re seeking a deep technical leader to define the engineering vision for Payments, shape architectural cohesion across our global payment rails and funds-flow systems, drive platform-level reliability and cost efficiency, and lead the next evolution of how fiat moves into and out of Coinbase.

What you’ll be doing (ie. job duties):

• Define and drive the multi-quarter technical strategy for Payments, spanning rails, orchestration, and transfers, to support new products, geos, and significant growth in payment volume.
• Architect and evolve the core Payments platform (rails integrations, routing, and funds-flow services) for high availability, low latency, and cost efficiency at global scale.
• Lead end-to-end design and rollout of large, cross-team initiatives (e.g., new global rails, decomp/migrations, resiliency programs), breaking high ambiguity into clear milestones and measurable outcomes.
• Set and enforce technical standards for financial correctness across Payments, including idempotency, reconciliation, failure-mode handling, and auditability for all money-movement paths.
• Partner closely with FinHub, Payments Risk, Regulatory Platform, and Product to design cohesive architectures that balance customer experience, risk controls, compliance, and unit economics.
• Provide deep technical mentorship to senior/staff engineers across Payments pods, upleveling system design quality, review rigor, and long-term maintainability.
• Use data and observability signals (e.g., success rates, latency, cost, incident patterns) to identify structural platform gaps and lead systematic reliability and efficiency improvements.
• Represent Payments in executive and cross-org forums, clearly communicating tradeoffs, aligning stakeholders on strategy, and securing buy-in for high-impact technical bets.

What we look for in you (ie. job requirements): 

• 10+ years building and operating large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Deep money-movement architecture experience (PSPs, ISO 20022, routing, double-entry, high-volume payment systems)
• Deep expertise in backend programming (e.g., Python, Go, Java) and cloud-native architecture.
• Proven track record designing highly available, high-performance systems.
• Ability to anticipate scaling bottlenecks before they occur and take decisive, proactive measures.
• Experience leading cross-functional technical initiatives and mentoring senior engineers.
• Commitment to technical excellence, sharing best practices, and fostering a strong engineering culture.
• Ability to distill complex technical concepts into clear and actionable solutions.

Nice to haves:

• Experience designing and operating ledgering or trading systems at large scale.
• Strong financial acumen with experience handling accounting data and financial transactions with high precision and reliability.
• Experience collaborating closely with finance and accounting teams.

Job ID: P77633

Pay Transparency Notice: The target annual base salary for this position can range as detailed below. Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility and benefits (including medical, dental, and vision).

Annual base salary range (excluding equity and bonus):

$253,895—$298,700 USD

• Application Limit: Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.
• Equal Opportunity Employer: Coinbase is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information. Applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
• US Applicants: ViewEmployee Rights,Know Your Rights, andE-Verify Notice of Participation.
• Accommodations: If you are an individual with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation, email us your request and contact info at accommodations[at]coinbase.com. Need screen reading technology?Click here to download a free compatible screen reader and view the tutorial.
• Data Privacy & Arbitration: By submitting your application, you agree to ourCandidate Privacy Notice. US applicants: By submitting your application, you agree to Arbitration of Disputes.