Senior Staff Software Engineer, Institutional Exchange

Coinbase is building the future of institutional trading through systems that enable major financial institutions to trade across markets with speed, depth, and trust. The Senior Staff Software Engineer will set the architectural direction for core Exchange systems, lead ultra-low-latency trading platform initiatives, align multiple teams, and mentor senior technical talent.

Responsibilities:

• Own the technical strategy and architecture for a core Exchange domain, driving multi-quarter initiatives from ambiguity through incremental milestones to delivery
• Lead the design of ultra-low-latency, event-sourced trading systems spanning matching, risk, and market data across cloud and colocated environments
• Drive cross-team technical alignment across Exchange, Prime, and Derivatives, securing commitment from senior engineering and product leadership
• Set and inspect the quality bar across teams - deterministic testing, failover design, incident leadership, and operational standards for 24/7 markets
• Maintain significant hands-on contribution while leading execution through other senior engineers and tech leads
• Mentor L5-L6 engineers and build the next rung of technical leadership on a lean, high-leverage team

Requirements:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant ownership of production trading, exchange, or market-data systems at scale
• Deep expertise in low-latency distributed systems and a backend language such as Java, C++, or Go, with fluency in JVM/Linux performance tuning
• Demonstrated architectural ownership of an end-to-end trading platform - order management, multi-venue connectivity, and real-time risk - not a single component
• Proven track record influencing technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority
• Experience operating latency-sensitive systems in on-prem/colocated and cloud environments, including incident command and safe production change
• Genuine interest in crypto and institutional markets, with the ability to ramp quickly; deep crypto experience is a plus, not a requirement
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality