Sr. Protocol Specialist - Data

Ready to be pushed beyond what you think you’re capable of?

At Coinbase, our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world. It’s a massive, ambitious opportunity that demands the best of us, every day, as we build the emerging onchain platform — and with it, the future global financial system.

To achieve our mission, we’re seeking a very specific candidate. We want someone who is passionate about our mission and who believes in the power of crypto and blockchain technology to update the financial system. We want someone who is eager to leave their mark on the world, who relishes the pressure and privilege of working with high caliber colleagues, and who actively seeks feedback to keep leveling up. We want someone who will run towards, not away from, solving the company’s hardest problems.

Our work culture is intense and isn’t for everyone. But if you want to build the future alongside others who excel in their disciplines and expect the same from you, there’s no better place to be.

While many roles at Coinbase are remote-first, we are not remote-only. In-person participation is required throughout the year. Team and company-wide offsites are held multiple times annually to foster collaboration, connection, and alignment. Attendance is expected and fully supported.

We are hiring for an exceptional Protocol Specialist that will leverage onchain and offchain data to find ways for Coinbase to make or save money. Our team works across the entire company and its broad product portfolio, and you will as well. 

What you’ll be doing (ie. job duties):

Part of your work when you onboard will be well defined based on business needs. Your initial focus will be staking data focused on a few verticals:

• Winning ETF mandates
• Maximizing staking yield across various protocols
• Supporting the evaluation of additional infrastructure complements on validator performance 

After, you will likely expand to Wrapped Assets, Onchain Borrow + DEX, and other initiatives.

Although during your onboarding and first few months on the job your work will largely be assigned, this is not the way you’ll be expected to operate long term. By design, everyone on our team has a lot of unstructured time. You are expected to operate independently to find the highest leverage ways to spend your time.

What we look for in you (ie. job requirements): 

• Entrepreneurial. You will not be told what to do. Your job will be to figure out what you want to work on, go work on it, and you will only loop in your manager if you get stuck or need help. This job is perfect for people with varied interests, a desire to do a lot of things at once, and a propensity for adding value to whatever you touch.
• Excellent at deriving insights from data. Every onchain and offchain Coinbase product is within your remit and you’re welcome to invent new products we have not yet thought of. Your job is to figure out what data you want to see, how to get access to it, and then analyze it to see what insights you can glean that can make a difference to Coinbase. If you’re finding yourself being a data engineer, you’ve taken a wrong turn. Your job is not to work on data pipelines, but to find the data you want (whether internal to Coinbase, available publicly onchain, or through some proprietary API or service we can pay for, etc.) and leverage it.
• An effective and convincing communicator. Protocol Specialists have ~zero hard power, but an enormous amount of soft power. This is by design. We cannot tell PMs, EMs, and others what to do, but we can convince them to do the things we say by doing the legwork on the analysis, making the business case, and getting it prioritized. If you’ve used your excellent data skills to find Coinbase a way to make $10M, but the PM decided not to implement your recommendation, you have failed. Your job is not to just provide insights but influence and convince at or over capacity PMs that your recommendation is something they need to prioritize.

This is an incredibly fun and impactful role for the right person. Coinbase is going to bring the entire world onchain and is the most important company in crypto. There is no better place to make a difference.

Strong Preference:

• 3+ years of crypto experience
• 5+ years of data analytics experience
• 6+ years of work experience
• Previously worked closely with protocols and their data (layer 1, 2, defi, etc.)
• Has published research, analyses, articles, or blogs on blockchain projects or protocols
• Active community member in the crypto ecosystem or a current open source code contributor
• Track record of strong relationship building &