Y Combinator Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Consumer - Growth Foundations)
Summary
Build and scale backend infrastructure for growth initiatives at Coinbase, including notifications, incentives, and user segmentation, using modern cloud technologies and distributed systems.
Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? At Coinbase, we are uncompromising on our mission to increase economic freedom. The bar is high, the environment is intense, and we like it that way. This isn't a place for complacency, it’s a place to be pushed past your perceived limits. If you're ready to build the future of finance alongside people who refuse to settle for "good enough," you belong here. Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called “surges.” learn more about working at Coinbase.
As a Senior Software Engineer, Backend on the Growth Foundations team within the Consumer & Business group, you'll build and scale the core infrastructure that powers growth across Coinbase. This team owns the foundational systems behind powering efforts as: notifications at scale, incentives and referral platforms, user targeting and segmentation, lifecycle communications, and ML ranking that power more than 50% of Coinbase web and app surfaces. You'll design and ship backend systems that enable high-impact growth initiatives for Retail, Institutional, Base, and international teams while maintaining the reliability, scalability, and performance our customers depend on.
What you'll do:
- Own the design and delivery of scalable distributed backend services that handle high QPS, low latency, and high reliability requirements for growth infrastructure
- Architect resilient service-oriented systems using modern cloud technologies, contributing across backend, data, and ML layers of the stack
- Partner with engineers, designers, product managers, and senior leadership to translate product and technical vision into quarterly roadmaps
- Lead investments in developer tooling, shared platform capabilities, and cross-team relationships that increase organizational velocity
- Build high-quality, well-tested production code for systems that are secure, reliable, and maintainable at scale
- Drive rapid experimentation by building and iterating on growth features that deliver measurable impact to user acquisition and retention
Required Skills and Experience:
- 5+ years of professional backend software engineering experience designing, building, scaling, and maintaining production services in distributed environments
- Demonstrated expertise in server-side architecture including performance optimization, security, scalability, and containerized environments (e.g., AWS, Kubernetes, Docker)
- Proven ability to design and run growth experiments or A/B tests, using data to identify and prioritize high-impact opportunities
- Experience integrating with databases, caching layers, and storage solutions (e.g., Postgres, MongoDB, DynamoDB) in high-throughput systems
- Track record of collaborating cross-functionally with product and engineering teams to deliver end-to-end solutions from scoping through production monitoring in a high velocity environment
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.
ID # P77683
Pay Transparency Notice: The target annual base salary for this position can range as detailed below. Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility and benefits (including medical, dental, and vision).
- Application Limit: Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.
- Equal Opportunity Employer: Coinbase is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information. Applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
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