Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Consumer - Prediction Markets)

About Coinbase: Coinbase is a global, category-defining financial technology leader on an uncompromising mission to increase economic freedom throughout the world. As one of the world’s most trusted platforms for exploring, trading, and managing crypto assets, Coinbase eliminates friction from digital currency markets. Built around an intense, high-performance, remote-first ecosystem, Coinbase pushes technical and operational bounds to create a robust, secure utility layer for the decentralized global economy.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly autonomous, systems-fluent, and low-latency proficient Staff Software Engineer, Backend to anchor the design and implementation of our next-generation consumer Prediction Markets engine under a permanent, full-time 100% remote configuration open across the United States. Sitting within the everything-exchange division, you will hold absolute technical ownership over the core market infrastructure enabling millions of global users to trade on real-world outcomes spanning sports, politics, crypto, and culture. Shifting completely away from routine non-regulated data transcription loops, entry-level website visual template adjustments, or basic administrative monitoring tasks, you will operate an active high-throughput distributed trade matching, order management execution, and real-time ledger settlement laboratory. Partnering cross-functionally alongside Product, Compliance, and Risk cells, you will spearhead the multi-quarter technical strategy to migrate from third-party venue configurations into a fully Coinbase-operated, regulated exchange and clearing platform. This position requires an engineering authority with 8+ years of distributed systems history who maps application boundaries fluidly natively using Backend and concurrency primitives, guarantees absolute transactional correctness, and mentors cross-functional engineering cells to raise the collective quality bar.

Key Responsibilities

• Core Market Infrastructure Governance: Own the long-term design, execution, and high-availability reliability of distributed backend systems powering real-time order matching, market resolution, and settlement loops natively utilizing Backend best practices.
• Transactional Correctness Engineering: Architect fault-tolerant distributed ledger networks that enforce ironclad correctness guarantees across clearing, position management, and financial payout workflows.
• Strategic Exchange Migration Instrumentation: Drive the technical direction, system modeling, and trade-off analysis required to migrate from legacy third-party venues onto our proprietary, in-house regulated exchange.
• Cross-Functional Risk Coordination: Coordinate next to Product, Compliance, and Risk management cells to implement regulatory boundaries and launch high-stakes trading features with confidence.
• Engineering Practice Scaffolding: Set a stellar benchmark for system design reviews, automated unit testing matrices, operational rigor, and zero-downtime deployment practices across the Prediction Markets vertical.
• Shared Infrastructure Consolidation: Partner with engineering leads across the wider Consumer and Business divisions to identify shared architectural components, minimizing duplication across global trading surfaces.
• Generative AI Workflow Integration: Responsibly leverage advanced generative AI tools and machine learning assistants to maximize code refactoring velocity, prompt scaffolding, and tooling efficiency while preserving absolute human oversight.
• Technical Leadership & Surges: Mentor and elevate engineers across the team, raising standards for incident response workflows, and participate actively in our intensive quarterly in-person team surge sessions.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• A minimum of 8+ years of proven, successful professional software engineering history operating as a Staff Backend Engineer, Principal Systems Architect, Distributed Systems Specialist, Low-Latency Tech Lead, or closely matching infrastructure capacity inside production environments.
• Expert Financial Systems Command: Documented history designing production-grade systems where financial correctness is non-negotiable—encompassing order management systems (OMS), transaction matching engines, clearinghouses, or core banking ledgers.
• Demonstrated experience leading multi-quarter technical initiatives from initial scoping to production launch as the primary technical decision-maker.
• Deep programming fluency in at least one modern high-performance backend language—explicitly including Go, Java, or similar compiled environments—backed by rock-solid mastery over distributed concurrency, memory data modeling, and race condition mitigations.
• Outstanding written, verbal, and textual communication strengths in English, with an established history presenting technical limitations and trade-off analyses clearly to business leaders.
• Location Context: Position operates under remote guidelines open exclusively to qualified systems software engineering authorities residing permanently within the United States, with a prerequisite to attend quarterly in-person team surges.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior platform or architectural background scaling prediction markets, derivatives trading platforms, betting exchange engines, or algorithmic fintech microservices.
• Familiarity with web3 transaction ecosystems, secure cryptographic primitives, or real-time event-driven message brokers (Kafka, Pulsar).
• An adaptable, high-intensity startup drive that excels inside fast-moving, high-performing corporate frameworks.

What We Offer

• Top-Tier US Staff Engineering Compensation Matrix: A highly competitive annual base salary scale of $218,025 - $256,500 USD calibrated location-specifically to your systems design pedigree, augmented by lucrative corporate equity options and performance bonuses.
• 100% remote workspace infrastructure autonomy anywhere within the United States, freeing your calendar from physical commute constraints.
• Category-Defining Scale Footprint: Elite career credentials built by architecting the foundational, regulated prediction market systems trusted by millions of traders across a $50B+ global marketplace.
• Comprehensive family-first health care preservation advantages, inclusive of premium medical, dental, and vision insurance models along with matching company 401(k) retirement schemes.
• Access to an open, transparent corporate engineering culture that rejects bureaucratic red tape, rewards raw performance, and supports you with top-tier technical tools, flexible time-off configurations, and intensive face-to-face team collaboration sessions.