Senior Software Engineer, Stablecoins

About the role

You will own the end-to-end delivery of critical backend services and smart contracts that power Coinbase Custom Stablecoins (CCS). This role places you at the center of high-stakes infrastructure where correctness, security, and reliability are non-negotiable. You will design and evolve the systems that enable partners to launch branded, USDC-backed stablecoins on Coinbase's infrastructure with strict compliance and operational standards. You will work closely with product, design, and technical leadership to translate the stablecoin roadmap into secure, scalable, and auditable releases every quarter. The position demands ownership of production services, onchain contracts, and the integrations that connect them, ensuring robust reserve accounting, minting, burning, and rewards distribution. You will be responsible for driving architectural decisions that balance security, scalability, and delivery speed in a fast-moving environment. This is a role for engineers who thrive under intense scrutiny and refuse to compromise on the highest standards of financial infrastructure.

Key facts

What you'll do

Architect and maintain the smart contracts responsible for minting, burning, and securing custom stablecoin supply, ensuring deployments are secure, auditable, and reliable.

Build and scale backend services that manage onboarding flows, issuance, reserve accounting, and rewards distribution for an expanding portfolio of partners.

Collaborate closely with product, design, and technical leads to deliver on the stablecoin roadmap, turning strategic requirements into shipped features each quarter.

Lead architectural decisions across both backend systems and smart contract surfaces, carefully weighing tradeoffs in security, scalability, and delivery velocity.

Write high-quality, well-tested code that sets the standard for operational excellence, reliability, and maintainability across the team.

Partner with security and compliance teams to uphold the highest levels of audit readiness, access control, and key management practices.

Utilize generative AI tools responsibly, ensuring human oversight and rigorous validation to produce business-ready outputs that improve efficiency, quality, and cost outcomes.

Serve as a technical owner for critical production services, coordinating with cross-functional stakeholders to resolve complex issues quickly and safely.

Champion best practices in onchain development, including gas optimization, upgradability patterns, and secure integration with onchain protocols.

Act as a mentor and thought leader, elevating the engineering bar through code reviews, knowledge sharing, and strong documentation.

Drive automation and observability improvements to enhance the reliability and transparency of minting, burning, and distribution workflows.

Engage with internal and external partners to clarify requirements, resolve technical challenges, and ensure alignment with business and regulatory expectations.

Contribute to disaster recovery and incident response processes for core stablecoin infrastructure, minimizing risk and service disruption.

Continuously explore emerging tools and frameworks to enhance development efficiency while maintaining strict security and compliance standards.

Requirements

Bring a strong background in software engineering with at least 5 years of experience designing, building, and operating production backend services.

Have hands-on experience writing, testing, and deploying smart contracts in production using Solidity or similar EVM languages, where real economic value was at stake.

Be comfortable owning services end to end and composing service-oriented architectures that scale to meet demanding workloads.

Possess a working knowledge of security and correctness tradeoffs unique to onchain systems, including audits, upgradeability, access control, and key management.

Demonstrate familiarity with Golang and onchain fundamentals, with Ethereum or similar protocol experience being highly valued.

Show preference for candidates with direct experience building DeFi or stablecoin infrastructure in live environments.

Apply generative AI responsibly in your work, maintaining human judgment to deliver accurate, business-ready results and drive measurable improvements.

Be prepared to commit to Coinbase's remote-first culture, including quarterly in-person "surges" that are essential for collaboration and alignment.

Understand the importance of compliance and regulatory awareness in the stablecoin domain and be proactive in addressing evolving requirements.

Embrace a mindset of continuous learning and improvement, actively seeking feedback and contributing to a high-performance engineering culture.

Nice to have

Experience contributing to open source projects related to blockchain, cryptography, or financial infrastructure.

Background working with regulated financial institutions or in environments with strict audit and compliance requirements.

Knowledge of token standards, onchain governance mechanisms, and interoperability protocols.

Familiarity with monitoring, logging, and alerting systems tailored for high-stakes financial services.

Practical notes

This role requires quarterly in-person working sessions called "surges" as part of Coinbase's remote-first policy.

Applications are limited to a maximum of 3 submissions per candidate within a 6-month period.

Coinbase is an Equal Opportunity Employer, welcoming applicants of all backgrounds and committed to fair consideration regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.