Staff Software Engineer, Backend - Platform (Overseer)

Ready to be pushed beyond what you think you're capable of?

At Coinbase, our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world. We're building the emerging onchain platform — and with it, the future global financial system.

About the Role

The gap between "each service works" and "the system is correct" compounds with every product Coinbase ships, every market it enters, every settlement mechanism it builds. Overseer is the platform that closes it — making cross-service financial correctness a designed property of the infrastructure, not a coordination problem between teams. At staff-level, you'll define what that platform becomes.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the architecture of the correctness layer across Coinbase's fund flows — from real-time invariant enforcement to AI-powered guardrails.
• Own the core platform: the invariant definition framework, real-time detection engine, and the APIs and tooling that partner teams use to onboard and monitor their fund flows.
• Lead the AI guardrails workstream: predictive consistency models that catch deviations before settlement, and proactive invariant discovery so coverage keeps pace with AI-accelerated development.
• Set technical direction for the team, make high-stakes architecture decisions, and raise the engineering bar.
• Partner cross-functionally with Transfer Service, Ledger, Payments, Risk, and Compliance to define correctness requirements and drive adoption.
• Mentor engineers and translate platform vision into executable roadmap.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• Experience building fault-tolerant systems.

Work Environment

While many roles at Coinbase are remote-first, in-person participation is required throughout the year. Team and company-wide offsites are held multiple times annually to foster collaboration, connection, and alignment. Attendance is expected and fully supported.