Senior Staff Software Engineer, Finhub

Coinbase
United States
Remote

Who this role is best for

Best suited to candidates with deep financial infrastructure experience working in high-consequence transaction systems, who thrive in a remote-first but in-person-intensive environment and are accustomed to leading cross-team architectural initiatives.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with 12+ years of experience in large-scale distributed systems and a background in financial transaction platforms
    — “12+ years of software engineering experience, including a track record of building and operating large-scale backend distributed systems in production.
  • Individuals who have led complex architectural initiatives across multiple teams without direct authority
    — “Experience driving multi-quarter technical strategy and leading complex architectural initiatives across multiple engineering teams without relying on direct authority.
  • Candidates who have designed financial systems with a focus on correctness, auditability, and reliability
    — “Deep experience designing financial, payments, ledger, banking, trading, or other high-consequence transaction systems where correctness and auditability are non-negotiable.

Things to consider

  • Quarterly in-person 'surges' may require travel and a strong preference for in-office work
    — “remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called “surges”.
  • The role demands a high level of cross-functional collaboration with teams like Risk and Compliance
    — “Partner with Payments, Product, Finance, Risk, Compliance, and Operations to align platform architecture with customer experience, regulatory obligations, and business priorities.

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with distributed systems and state machines in your resume and interviews
    — “Proven expertise in distributed systems, consistency models, asynchronous workflows, and state machines
  • Demonstrate your ability to define and lead multi-quarter technical strategies
    — “Experience driving multi-quarter technical strategy and leading complex architectural initiatives
  • Showcase your track record in financial systems where correctness and auditability are critical
    — “Deep experience designing financial, payments, ledger, banking, trading, or other high-consequence transaction systems
  • Emphasize your ability to communicate complex tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders
    — “Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical tradeoffs clearly and build alignment with executive, engineering, product, finance, and operations stakeholders.
  • Demonstrate your skill in mentoring senior engineers and improving long-term maintainability
    — “Provide deep technical mentorship to senior and staff engineers, raising the bar for system design, operational excellence, technical writing, and long-term maintainability across FinHub.
Pace · SteadyCollaboration · MediumAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

Skills & requirements

Required

PythonJava

Stack & domain

GoJavaPythonCommunicationFinance

About the role

Original posting from Coinbase

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 Staff Software Engineer on the FinHub team within the Platform Product Group, you'll define the technical vision for the financial infrastructure that powers Coinbase. FinHub is the foundation for account balances and money movement across trading, payments, financing, staking, and other financial products. You'll serve as the domain's senior-most technical individual contributor, leading the evolution of our ledger and money-movement architecture so Coinbase can move funds with uncompromising correctness, security, reliability, and scale.

What you'll do:

Define and drive the multi-quarter technical strategy for FinHub's ledger and money-movement platform, supporting new financial products, platforms, and significant growth in transaction volume.

Architect unified, reusable primitives across fiat and crypto fund flows, including account balances, holds, settlements, postings, transfers, and transaction history.

Lead the rearchitecture of distributed financial workflows and state transitions, enforcing standards for double-entry accounting, idempotency, invariant enforcement, reconciliation, auditability, and safe failure recovery.

Drive end-to-end design and rollout of large, cross-team initiatives, breaking complex and ambiguous problems into clear milestones, migration plans, and measurable outcomes.

Partner with Payments, Product, Finance, Risk, Compliance, and Operations to align platform architecture with customer experience, regulatory obligations, and business priorities.

Provide deep technical mentorship to senior and staff engineers, raising the bar for system design, operational excellence, technical writing, and long-term maintainability across FinHub.

Required Skills and Experience:

12+ years of software engineering experience, including a track record of building and operating large-scale backend distributed systems in production.

Deep experience designing financial, payments, ledger, banking, trading, or other high-consequence transaction systems where correctness and auditability are non-negotiable.

Proven expertise in distributed systems, consistency models, asynchronous workflows, and state machines, with strong backend programming experience in languages such as Go, Java, or Python.

Experience driving multi-quarter technical strategy and leading complex architectural initiatives across multiple engineering teams without relying on direct authority.

Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical tradeoffs clearly and build alignment with executive, engineering, product, finance, and operations stakeholders.

Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

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)). 

Annual base salary range (excluding equity and bonus):$253,895—$298,700 USD

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.

US Applicants: View Employee Rights, Know Your Rights, and E-Verify Notice of Participation.

Accommodations: If you are an individual with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation, email us your request and contact info at accommodations[at]coinbase.com. Need screen reading technology? Click here to download a free compatible screen reader and view the tutorial.

Data Privacy & Arbitration: By submitting your application, you agree to our Candidate Privacy Notice. US applicants: By submitting your application, you agree to Arbitration of Disputes.

Source: Coinbase careers

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