Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Consumer - Risk)

Job Description

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Risk Engineering team within the Consumer & Business group, you'll serve as the technical anchor for the team that protects Coinbase and millions of users from fraud, financial crime, and financial risk. You'll define multi-quarter technical strategies, shape the architecture of our most critical risk systems, and lead the engineering team that builds real-time detection, decisioning, and mitigation infrastructure operating at the scale and speed of crypto markets.

What You'll Do

• Own the end-to-end technical architecture of Coinbase's Risk Platform, including real-time fraud detection engines, risk decisioning systems, financial risk monitoring, and mitigation infrastructure operating at high throughput with low latency and 24x7 availability
• Shape multi-quarter technical strategies for the Risk Platform, identifying opportunities to simplify complexity, improve reliability, reduce fraud losses, and scale risk capabilities across new products, asset classes, and jurisdictions
• Lead the design and implementation of critical risk systems, translating ambiguous, high-stakes business requirements into scalable, resilient architectures that balance fraud prevention with user experience
• Partner cross-functionally with Data Science, ML, Product, Compliance, and senior leadership to define the roadmap and ensure the risk platform evolves ahead of emerging threats and regulatory requirements
• Build AI-native risk systems that leverage fleets of agents to automate complex detection and response workflows, significantly reducing the need for manual intervention
• Strengthen the team's technical capability through architecture reviews, code reviews, engineering standards for quality and performance, and hands-on mentorship of engineers at all levels

Required Skills And Experience

• 8+ years of backend software engineering experience with significant experience architecting and developing high-throughput, low-latency production systems at scale
• Deep expertise in backend systems design (microservices, event-driven architectures, REST/GraphQL APIs) with a track record of building systems that meet high-availability and correctness requirements
• Proven ability to define and execute multi-quarter technical strategies, influence engineering direction across teams, and translate ambiguous problem spaces into clear, actionable technical plans
• Experience architecting solutions for complex, high-stakes domains where correctness, latency, and reliability are critical, delivering impactful systems that operate at scale
• Demonstrated success raising the technical bar for a team through architectural guidance, engineering culture improvements, and mentorship of senior engineers with measurable outcomes
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost reduction, and risk detection accuracy