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Coinbase
Staff ML Risk Analyst
Job Description
ABOUT THE ROLE
As a Staff ML Risk Analyst on the Growth & Risk team within the Consumer & Business group at Coinbase, you'll sit at the intersection of fraud intelligence and machine learning infrastructure, defining how we identify, model, and respond to sophisticated fraud at scale. This is a high-impact role where you'll build and shape the ML-powered, automated solutions that detect and prevent account takeover (ATO) and scam activity before it reaches our users.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
In this role, you'll be responsible for defining the ML data and feature strategy for fraud detection, determining what data needs to enter our systems so models can take intelligent, high-accuracy action on the small fraction of traffic where intervention matters most. You'll also own the end-to-end feature engineering pipeline, identifying, building, validating, and promoting features that drive measurable improvements in ATO and scam ML performance.
You'll work closely with Machine Learning Engineers to translate analytical insights into production-ready ML systems, ensuring models are instrumented, monitored, and continuously improved. Additionally, you'll mentor junior team members across the ML Analytics function, defining the technical approach and translating direction into execution. You'll also partner cross-functionally with Product Managers and Risk Analysts to surface fraud signals and translate ML findings into business-impacting decisions.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED
To succeed in this role, you'll need:
* 8+ years of hands-on experience in machine learning analytics, data science, or a related technical field, with meaningful experience applied to risk, fraud, or payments problems
* Practitioner-level proficiency in Spark, Python, and big data ML as a core working stack, with demonstrated ability to operate beyond SQL and rule-based approaches
* Proven experience in feature engineering for ML models, including identifying signals, building pipelines, and validating feature quality at scale
* Working knowledge of the ML infrastructure landscape evolution, from Hadoop-era big data through modern feature stores (e.g., Tecton, Feast), with the ability to apply that context to close infrastructure gaps
* Demonstrated ability to optimize ML systems for sensitivity and accuracy on high-stakes, low-volume fraud traffic rather than broad-coverage, high-volume use cases
* Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality
WHY REMOTE
As a remote-first company, Coinbase offers the flexibility to work from anywhere. However, we also believe in the importance of in-person collaboration and will require you to attend quarterly in-person working sessions called "surges."
BENEFITS
Coinbase offers a competitive total compensation package, including base salary (ranging from $193,970 to $228,200 USD), equity, bonus eligibility, and benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k)).