Software Engineer, Backend - Blockchain Platform (Staking Validators)

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.

The Staking Validators team is responsible for operating all staking-related nodes at Coinbase.

• We operate the largest validators fleet in the world: The team’s mandate is to onboard, operate, and optimize proof-of-stake network infrastructure at Coinbase.
• We build infrastructure to provide the most secure and highest uptime: Observability and monitoring is a cornerstone of the team’s philosophy in order to ensure top-tier uptime and performance.
• We constantly innovate to bring the best yield for our customers: We are always on the lookout for creative ways to optimize our operations as we continue to scale.
• We empower best in class staking experience for internal coinbase teams & external customers.

Unique opportunities on this team:

• Amazing autonomy - operate as a “Protocol CTO”: We split our responsibility by protocol; for the protocol you’re owning we look up to you to operate as a “Protocol CTO”. This means deeply engaging with community members and partners, and constantly innovating to make this protocol a success within Coinbase.
• Crypto forward: We’re at the forefront of crypto innovation at Coinbase, engaging deeply with the community and operating at the bleeding edge of crypto innovation.
• High impact: As one of the largest validator operators in the world, you’ll have a wide impact on Coinbase as well as the wider crypto industry.
• Technically challenging: Unique engineering challenges of operating highly performant blockchain nodes at scale. 

Public blogposts:

• Operating staking nodes on Kubernetes 
• Reimagining Ethereum staking node architecture to improve performance and reliability

What you'll be doing:

• Build new services to meet critical product and business needs using Golang.
• Design scalable systems to solve novel problems with modern cloud technology and industry best practices.
• Work with engineers, designers, product managers and senior leadership to turn our product and technical vision into a tangible roadmap every quarter.
• Write high quality, well tested code to meet the needs of your customers.

What we look for in you:

• You have at least 2+ years of experience in software engineering.
• You’ve designed, built, scaled and maintained production services, and know how to compose a service oriented architecture.
• You write high quality, well tested code to meet the needs of your customers.
• You’re passionate about building an open financial system that brings the world together.

Nice to haves:

• You have gone through a rapid growth in your company (from startup to mid-size).
• You have experience with Blockchains (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum etc.).
• You have experience decomposing a large monolith into microservices.
• You’ve worked with Golang, Ruby, Docker, Sinatra, Rails, Postgres, MongoDB or Redshift.
• Experience and/or interest in blockchain nodes.
• You’ve built financial, high reliability or security systems.
• You have Crypto-forward experience, including familiarity with onchain activity such as interacting with Ethereum addresses, using ENS, and engaging with dApps or blockchain-based services.
• Linux OS System Exp