Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Institutional - Exchange)
Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? At Coinbase, we are uncompromising on our mission to increase economic freedom. The bar is high, the environment is intense, and we like it that way. This isn't a place for complacency, it’s a place to be pushed past your perceived limits. If you're ready to build the future of finance alongside people who refuse to settle for "good enough," you belong here. Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called “surges.” learn more about working at Coinbase.
As a Senior Software Engineer on the Coinbase Exchange team within the Institutional group, you'll design, build, and operate the high-performance trading systems that power Coinbase's spot exchange. This team owns the customer-facing FIX, REST, and WebSocket APIs used by institutional and professional trading customers. You'll solve complex problems at the intersection of distributed systems, real-time financial infrastructure, and customer-facing products, directly shaping the reliability and performance of one of the world's largest crypto exchanges.
What you’ll do:
- 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.
Required skills and experience:
- 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.
Position ID: P78289
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Pay Transparency Notice: Base salary varies by location (see range below). Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility, and benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k)).
- Application Limit: Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.
- Equal Opportunity Employer: Coinbase is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information. Applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
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- Medical Plan, Dental and Vision Plan with generous employee contributions
- Health Savings Account with company contributions each pay period
- Disability and Life Insurance
- 401(k) plan with company match
- Wellness Stipend
- Mobile/Internet Reimbursement
- Volunteer Time Off
- Fertility Counseling and Benefits
- Generous Time off/Leave Policy
- The option of getting paid in digital currency