Description
Ready to be pushed beyond what you think you’re capable of?
At Coinbase, our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world.
We’re seeking a Staff Software Engineer to technically lead the Tax Engineering team within the Consumer Product Group.
Tax Engineering sits at the intersection of every trade, every payment, and every product Coinbase ships on the hot path.
As the Staff Software Engineer on the team you'll define multi-quarter technical strategies, build systems with stringent correctness and scalability requirements, and set the technical direction for how Coinbase handles one of the most complex domains in financial services.
Ownership & impact
In this role, you will:
- Own the architecture and evolution of real-time and offline systems that calculate, track, and report taxes for crypto transactions at scale , ensuring correctness, low latency, and 24x7 availability.
- Define multi-quarter technical strategies for the Tax Platform, identifying opportunities to simplify complexity, improve reliability, and expand capabilities as Coinbase launches new asset types and products.
- Architect and build distributed systems that power tax calculation engines, cost basis tracking, and tax reporting APIs , serving millions of customers with strict accuracy requirements.
- Lead technical design and code reviews, setting standards for quality, performance, and maintainability across the team.
- Mentor engineers and elevate the technical bar.
- Partner cross-functionally with product, data, compliance, and frontend teams to deliver tax features that meet regulatory requirements and delight customers , from annual tax reports to real-time gain/loss calculations.
- Drive operational excellence by owning system reliability, incident response, and performance optimization for critical tax infrastructure that operates at the scale and speed of crypto markets.
Minimum qualifications
- 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant experience architecting and developing solutions to ambiguous, high-impact problems.
- Proven track record designing, building, scaling, and maintaining production-level distributed systems with stringent correctness and availability requirements.
- Strong experience with backend languages (e.g., Go, Python, or similar) and modern infrastructure patterns including microservices, event-driven architectures, and REST/GraphQL API design.
- Deep expertise in data-intensive systems , experience with Kafka, Clickhouse, or similar tools for real-time and batch processing at scale.
- Demonstrated technical leadership: leading large projects with long-term impact, mentoring engineers, and driving alignment across teams on technical strategy.
- Excellent judgment on prioritization and the ability to break down ambiguous problems into actionable technical plans.
- Demonstrates the ability to responsibly use generative AI tools and copilots (e.g., LibreChat, Gemini, Glean) in daily workflows, continuously learn as tools evolve, and apply human-in-the-loop practices to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in efficiency, cost, and quality.
Nice to haves
- Experience with tax systems, cost basis engines, 1099 reporting, or financial compliance infrastructure.
- Familiarity with equities, options, or margin trading or strong interest in learning trading/brokerage domains.
- Background at a tech-focused company (fintech, crypto, high-growth startup) rather than traditional finance.
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).
Annual base salary range (excluding equity and bonus):
$217,900-$217,900 CAD