Senior Software Engineer, Backend - Payments Platform

Role Overview

Coinbase is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to join the Payments team within the Platform organization. The Payments team builds the infrastructure, workflows, and APIs that power fiat on- and off-ramps for millions of consumers and institutional customers globally, across payment rails, partner integrations, and funds-flow systems.

We are turning that stack into an API-driven platform—a Stripe-like product for Coinbase's own Retail, Institutional, and Developer teams—so a new payment method or rail can go live rapidly. Our north star is payment success rate: the share of attempted payments that move safely and reliably, end to end. In this role, you will design and build scalable backend systems that process high-volume payment traffic, collaborating closely with cross-functional partners.

What You'll Do

• Design and build scalable, fault-tolerant backend services for payment processing using Go, ensuring high reliability and correctness for financial transactions at scale.
• Own end-to-end delivery of payment features, from technical design through production deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
• Build platform primitives, extension points, and self-serve APIs that allow other Coinbase teams to add new payment methods and rails without core service rewrites.
• Partner with engineers, product managers, and leadership to translate product vision and business requirements into quarterly technical plans.
• Drive improvements to system reliability, observability, and performance across payment services, identifying and resolving bottlenecks proactively.
• Contribute to engineering quality through code reviews, architecture discussions, and service-oriented best practices.

Required Skills and Experience

• 5+ years of experience in backend software engineering, with hands-on experience building and maintaining production services in a service-oriented or microservices architecture.
• Proficiency in Go or similar backend languages, with experience designing scalable, low-latency APIs and distributed systems.
• Proven track record of owning features end-to-end (design, deployment, production support) in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience with financial systems, payments infrastructure, or high-volume transactional systems requiring precision and auditability.
• Experience utilizing generative AI responsibly with human oversight to improve workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Application Rules

• Application Limit: Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.
• Coinbase is remote-first, with quarterly in-person team working sessions called "surges."