Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Institutional - Exchange)

Coinbase is a cryptocurrency exchange focused on increasing economic freedom and building the future of finance. The Senior Software Engineer will design, build, and operate high-performance backend systems for Coinbase Exchange, including APIs and services supporting institutional trading, order entry, market data, and trade execution. The role also focuses on distributed systems reliability, performance, production operations, cross-functional collaboration, and engineering mentorship.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and maintain high-throughput, low-latency APIs and backend services that power order entry, market data, trade execution, and other real-time trading workflows on Coinbase Exchange
• Own services end-to-end throughout their lifecycle, including technical design, implementation, deployment, observability, scaling, and production support, including participation in on-call rotations
• Improve the performance, reliability, and operational readiness of distributed systems where availability, correctness, and latency are critical
• Partner with Product, SRE, Security, and other engineering teams to translate customer and business needs into effective technical solutions
• Drive engineering quality through design reviews, code reviews, well-tested code, and mentorship that fosters a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement

Requirements:

• 5+ years building and operating production backend or distributed systems in Java, Go, or a comparable backend language
• Proven experience designing and scaling high-volume, performance-sensitive services with expertise in concurrency, event-driven architecture, reliability, and performance optimization
• Experience with real-time or financial systems, market connectivity protocols such as FIX, or high-throughput messaging technologies such as Aeron or Kafka, or demonstrated experience that transfers to these areas
• Track record of building customer-facing APIs using FIX, REST, WebSocket, or comparable protocols and operating services in cloud and Kubernetes-based environments
• Experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL and event-driven or streaming data systems
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality