Staff Software Engineer (EAA)

The Customer Administration Engineering (CAE) team within Coinbase's Enterprise Applications and Architecture org builds and operates Control Center, the secure platform powering customer data operations for approximately 7,000 internal users across CX, Compliance, Legal, Global Investigations, and Trust and Risk. As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll be the technical anchor driving Control Center's evolution from a human-specialist UI into a modular, AI-agent-ready operations platform exposing capabilities via MCP for both human and autonomous consumers. You'll lead architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and deliver high-impact platform capabilities at an exciting inflection point for the product.

What you'll do:

• Own the architecture and delivery of foundational platform capabilities including MCP tool registries, AI orchestration layers, risk-based access automation, and the away-team contribution model that enables product groups to build on Control Center safely and at speed.
• Drive Control Center's evolution into an AI-agent-ready, headless operations platform by designing MCP procedure constructs, agentic guardrails, HITL orchestration, and evaluation frameworks for secure autonomous operations.
• Lead technical direction across the team in partnership with the Engineering Manager and Product, authoring TDDs, running design reviews, decomposing complex initiatives into deliverable milestones, and mentoring engineers through code review.
• Build highly reliable, secure distributed backend services, owning SLO definitions, observability instrumentation, incident response, and operational readiness for Tier-1 systems serving thousands of internal users and AI agents.
• Partner across EAA, Product Engineering, and Security Engineering teams to deliver cross-functional outcomes and drive shared platform primitives that eliminate duplicated infrastructure.

Required Skills and Experience:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with a demonstrated track record architecting and delivering large-scale, high-traffic distributed systems, including deep proficiency in backend service design, API development (gRPC, MCP, GraphQL), and scalable microservices architectures.
• Proven ability to independently lead ambiguous, high-impact technical initiatives from whiteboard to production, writing high-quality, well-tested code that sets the standard across multi-team problem spaces.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native infrastructure including AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, event-driven architectures (Kafka, MQ), distributed caching, and SQL or NoSQL databases.
• Track record building secure, compliant internal tools or platforms with deep appreciation for security controls, access management, audit logging, and data governance in a regulated environment.
• Experience building or integrating with agentic AI systems including MCP servers, LLM orchestration layers, RAG pipelines, HITL workflows, or evaluation and guardrail frameworks, with proficiency in Go and willingness to work across Python.
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Job #: P67493

• To increase your chances of passing the technical screening, make sure you have a strong foundation in software engineering principles and are proficient in the programming languages used by Coinbase, such as Java, Python, or JavaScript, and review the company's open-source projects on GitHub to familiarize yourself with their codebase.
• Create a portfolio that showcases your experience with blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, or financial systems, and highlights your ability to work on complex, high-impact projects, as evidenced by your personal projects or contributions to open-source projects.
• Prepare to talk about your experience with agile development methodologies, continuous integration, and deployment, as Coinbase emphasizes a culture of rapid iteration and experimentation, and be ready to provide specific examples of how you've implemented these practices in your previous roles.
• Familiarize yourself with Coinbase's products and services, such as Coinbase Wallet, Coinbase Pro, or Coinbase API, and think about how you can contribute to the development of these products, as the company looks for employees who are passionate about their mission and can demonstrate a deep understanding of their business and technology.
• Be prepared to discuss your thoughts on the future of finance and cryptocurrency, and how you believe Coinbase can continue to innovate and lead in this space, as the company is looking for employees who are not only skilled engineers but also passionate about the industry and eager to make an impact.
• Research Coinbase's compensation package and benefits, and be prepared to negotiate your salary based on industry standards and your level of experience, as the company offers a competitive compensation package, but may also expect you to be flexible and open to negotiation.