Senior Software Engineer, Data Layer

Coinbase is a company committed to increasing economic freedom, and they are seeking a Senior Software Engineer for their Data Layer team. The role involves shaping the API platform that connects client applications to backend services, improving performance and developer experience.

Responsibilities:

• Own and deliver projects end to end, from scoping and system design through implementation, rollout, and production validation, driving measurable progress on the team's highest-priority initiatives
• Design and build high-reliability, low-latency systems serving millions of users, tackling challenges like caching, upstream service optimization, and efficient connection management at scale
• Build and improve the API framework and tooling that hundreds of engineers depend on, making it fast and easy for teams across the company to build, test, and ship independently
• Drive operational excellence across T0 services: own SLOs, improve observability, lead incident response, and reduce operational toil so the team can invest in high-leverage work
• Partner cross-functionally with product engineering teams to design API schemas, support service launches, and ensure the platform evolves to meet their needs
• Set the technical bar through code and design reviews, mentor engineers across the team, and contribute to architectural direction

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional engineering experience with demonstrated ownership of complex, production-grade distributed systems
• Deep proficiency in backend languages (Go, Java, or similar) with hands-on experience designing microservices, API platforms, and high-availability systems
• Track record of delivering projects end to end, including scoping, architecture, implementation, monitoring, and iteration, in environments where reliability and performance are non-negotiable
• Experience decomposing complex systems into clean APIs and abstractions adopted by multiple consuming teams, with comfort owning on-call responsibilities and driving incident response across multi-service architectures
• Demonstrated ability to align technical decisions with cross-functional stakeholders, translating platform capabilities into actionable plans with frontend engineers, product teams, and platform consumers
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality