# Senior Staff Software Engineer, Payments

**Company:** [Coinbase](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/coinbase)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Engineering Management
**Salary:** $254k – $299k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** Python, Go, Java, Distributed Systems, Cloud-Native Architecture, Payment Systems, Iso 20022, Routing, Double-Entry Bookkeeping, High Availability Systems
**Posted:** 2026-06-08

> Senior technical leader defining multi-quarter strategy and architecture for Coinbase's global Payments platform, driving high-scale money movement systems, reliability, and cross-team initiatives. Requires 10+ years building large-scale distributed systems and deep payments architecture experience.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Define and drive the multi-quarter technical strategy for Payments, spanning rails, orchestration, and transfers, to support new products, geos, and significant growth in payment volume.
- Architect and evolve the core Payments platform (rails integrations, routing, and funds-flow services) for high availability, low latency, and cost efficiency at global scale.
- Lead end-to-end design and rollout of large, cross-team initiatives (e.g., new global rails, decomp/migrations, resiliency programs), breaking high ambiguity into clear milestones and measurable outcomes.
- Set and enforce technical standards for financial correctness across Payments, including idempotency, reconciliation, failure-mode handling, and auditability for all money-movement paths.
- Partner closely with FinHub, Payments Risk, Regulatory Platform, and Product to design cohesive architectures that balance customer experience, risk controls, compliance, and unit economics.
- Provide deep technical mentorship to senior/staff engineers across Payments pods, upleveling system design quality, review rigor, and long-term maintainability.
- Use data and observability signals (e.g., success rates, latency, cost, incident patterns) to identify structural platform gaps and lead systematic reliability and efficiency improvements.
- Represent Payments in executive and cross-org forums, clearly communicating tradeoffs, aligning stakeholders on strategy, and securing buy-in for high-impact technical bets.

## Requirements
- 10+ years building and operating large-scale distributed systems in production.
- Deep money-movement architecture experience (PSPs, ISO 20022, routing, double-entry, high-volume payment systems).
- Deep expertise in backend programming (e.g., Python, Go, Java) and cloud-native architecture.
- Proven track record designing highly available, high-performance systems.
- Ability to anticipate scaling bottlenecks before they occur and take decisive, proactive measures.
- Experience leading cross-functional technical initiatives and mentoring senior engineers.
- Commitment to technical excellence, sharing best practices, and fostering a strong engineering culture.
- Ability to distill complex technical concepts into clear and actionable solutions.

## Nice to Haves
- Experience designing and operating ledgering or trading systems at large scale.
- Strong financial acumen with experience handling accounting data and financial transactions with high precision and reliability.
- Experience collaborating closely with finance and accounting teams.

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