Senior Staff Software Engineer, Payments

ABOUT THE ROLE We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead the engineering vision for Payments at Coinbase. As a key member of our team, you will define the technical strategy 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 DO As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will be responsible for: - Defining and driving the multi-quarter technical strategy for Payments, spanning rails, orchestration, and transfers, to support new products, geos, and significant growth in payment volume. - Architecting and evolving the core Payments platform (rails integrations, routing, and funds-flow services) for high availability, low latency, and cost efficiency at global scale. - Leading 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. - Setting and enforcing technical standards for financial correctness across Payments, including idempotency, reconciliation, failure-mode handling, and auditability for all money-movement paths. - Partnering closely with FinHub, Payments Risk, Regulatory Platform, and Product to design cohesive architectures that balance customer experience, risk controls, compliance, and unit economics. - Providing deep technical mentorship to senior/staff engineers across Payments pods, upleveling system design quality, review rigor, and long-term maintainability. - Using data and observability signals (e.g., success rates, latency, cost, incident patterns) to identify structural platform gaps and lead systematic reliability and efficiency improvements. - Representing Payments in executive and cross-org forums, clearly communicating tradeoffs, aligning stakeholders on strategy, and securing buy-in for high-impact technical bets. WHAT YOU'LL NEED To be successful in this role, you will need: - 10+ years of experience 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. WHY REMOTE Coinbase is a remote-first company, with quarterly in-person working sessions called "surges." As a remote team member, you will have the flexibility to work from anywhere while being part of a dynamic and collaborative team. BENEFITS - Target annual base salary range: $253,895 - $298,700 USD. - Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility. - Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage. - Flexible schedule and work environment. - Opportunities for professional growth and development. - Commitment to diversity, equity,