Senior Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform

📋 Description

• • As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Data Platform team at Coinbase, you will be at the forefront of shaping the future of data infrastructure for a company dedicated to increasing economic freedom globally. This is a pivotal, hands-on role where you will define and lead the technical strategy for Coinbase's data ecosystem, operating at the critical intersection of distributed systems, data engineering, and AI readiness.
• • You will report directly to the Senior Director of Engineering, Data Platform, and will serve as the foremost technical leader within this domain. Your responsibilities will encompass setting the architectural direction for the entire data platform, mentoring and elevating the skills of the engineering talent within the team, and driving multi-quarter roadmaps that align with the company's ambitious goals.
• • This role is a unique opportunity to build foundational infrastructure that will power the next decade of innovation at Coinbase, transitioning the company from a collection of managed data services to a truly scalable, robust data platform. You will operate with significant autonomy, expected to influence and drive impact across multiple cross-functional teams and the broader Infrastructure organization.
• • A core aspect of your role will be to architect for an AI-native future. This involves redesigning data infrastructure from the ground up to natively support advanced AI and Machine Learning workloads. You will ensure that data pipelines, data lake infrastructure, and compute systems are optimized to power sophisticated fraud detection models, other AI applications, and cutting-edge multi-agent AI architectures.
• • You will be instrumental in driving the evolution towards near-real-time data availability across the company, enabling downstream teams to leverage fresher, more actionable data for critical business decisions and product development.
• • A key initiative will be to spearhead a "builder mindset" within the team, fostering an environment where data infrastructure is built to create compounding leverage, enabling greater efficiency and scalability.
• • You will be responsible for driving cross-functional alignment, building consensus, and securing commitment from senior leadership and key partners across product, infrastructure, data engineering, analytics, ML, privacy, security, and compliance on technical priorities and critical tradeoffs.
• • You will serve as the primary technical voice for the Data Platform in company-wide forums, including OKR planning, architecture reviews, and strategic discussions about long-term infrastructure evolution.
• • Your technical leadership will guide the team in developing and executing a multi-quarter roadmap focused on engineering-led cost reduction, fundamentally rethinking how infrastructure costs scale with growth rather than simply trimming existing expenses.
• • You will own the technical strategy and architecture for the Data Platform, defining the direction for data ingestion, transformation, warehousing, streaming, and serving systems.
• • This role demands a deep understanding of the entire data lifecycle, with the ability to reason about performance, reliability, cost, security, and privacy at every layer of the data stack.
• • You will champion the development of data systems that are specifically designed to support ML training pipelines, feature stores, real-time inference, and AI agent workloads at scale.
• • A significant part of your contribution will involve demonstrating the ability to responsibly leverage generative AI tools and copilots in daily workflows, continuously learning and adapting to evolving tools, and applying human-in-the-loop practices to ensure business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in efficiency, cost, and quality.
• • You will be a key player in moving the team away from reliance on managed services towards building and operating platform-grade infrastructure.
• • Your platform mindset will be crucial, thinking like a product manager for data infrastructure, exhibiting deep empathy for developer customers, focusing on reducing friction, and being obsessed with creating leverage for the entire organization.
• • You will be expected to drive alignment and secure buy-in from stakeholders across the organization, ensuring that the Data Platform's technical direction supports the broader company objectives.
• • This role offers a unique opportunity to make a significant impact on the core infrastructure of a leading company in the rapidly evolving cryptocurrency and blockchain space, contributing to the future of the global financial system.