.png)
Easy Apply
Easy Apply
Lead technical strategy for Solana staking at Coinbase, optimizing validator performance and driving cross-product integration while mentoring engineers.
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 Staff Software Engineer on the Staking Platform team within the Platform group, you'll serve as Coinbase's definitive Solana staking technical authority, owning strategy across validator operations, staking integrations, and protocol evolution. Coinbase operates one of the largest Solana staking operations in the world, managing approximately 9.25% of all staked SOL. You'll combine deep Solana protocol mastery with hands-on engineering execution and external ecosystem influence to shape Coinbase's Solana staking trajectory.
What you'll do:
- Own Coinbase's multi-year technical strategy for Solana staking across validator performance, protocol participation, and product integration, connecting engineering decisions to yield optimization, cost efficiency, and customer growth.
- Lead the engineering effort to achieve industry-leading APY through validator optimization, including vote accuracy, block production, MEV strategies, commission tuning, and stake distribution tooling.
- Serve as Coinbase's foremost authority on the Solana runtime, consensus mechanism, staking economics, and validator client landscape (Agave, Firedancer), evaluating protocol upgrades (e.g., SIMD proposals) and proactively positioning Coinbase for changes before they land.
- Partner with Retail and Institutional Staking product and engineering teams to architect scalable staking integrations across Coinbase's product surface, while advising on non-staking Solana initiatives requiring deep protocol knowledge.
- Represent Coinbase in the Solana ecosystem by maintaining relationships with the Solana Foundation, core development teams, and major validators, contributing to protocol governance, and speaking at conferences.
- Build production infrastructure for validator operations, monitoring, automation, and reliability while mentoring IC4-IC5 engineers on Solana-specific domain expertise.
Required Skills and Experience:
- 10+ years of software engineering with extensive hands-on Solana protocol experience, including deep familiarity with the runtime, validator mechanics, staking economics, consensus (Tower BFT), and the validator client ecosystem at the source-code level.
- Production-level proficiency in Rust and/or Go, with deep experience building and operating complex distributed infrastructure at scale (bare metal, cloud, networking, observability).
- Established presence in the Solana ecosystem with existing relationships across the Solana Foundation, core contributor teams, or major validators, and a track record of public speaking or protocol governance participation.
- Demonstrated ability to define multi-quarter technical strategies, break ambiguous large-scope problems into executable plans, and drive cross-functional alignment with product, business, and executive stakeholders.
- Familiarity with Solana's evolving staking landscape (liquid staking, stake pools, restaking protocols) or comparative PoS protocol experience (Ethereum, Cosmos).
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.
Pay Transparency Notice: Base salary varies by location (see range below). Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility, and benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k)).
Annual base salary range (excluding equity and bonus):
$218,025—$256,500 USD
- 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.
- US Applicants: View Employee Rights, Know Your Rights, and E-Verify Notice of Participation.
- Accommodations: If you are an individual with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation, email us your request and contact info at accommodations[at]coinbase.com. Need screen reading technology? Click here to download a free compatible screen reader and view the tutorial.
- Data Privacy & Arbitration: By submitting your application, you agree to our Candidate Privacy Notice. US applicants: By submitting your application, you agree to Arbitration of Disputes.
Similar Jobs at Coinbase
Artificial Intelligence • Blockchain • Fintech • Financial Services • Cryptocurrency • NFT • Web3
Build and operate foundational developer infrastructure across CI, build systems, deployment orchestration, and test platforms. Improve build speed, deployment safety, test reliability, observability, and engineering productivity at scale. Own services from architecture through production, including SLOs and on-call operations. Lead cross-functional technical projects, partner with engineering teams, mentor engineers, and shape platform strategy.
Top Skills:
AWSCi/CdContainersDatadogDistributed SystemsGenerative AiGithub ActionsGoKubernetesTerraform
Artificial Intelligence • Blockchain • Fintech • Financial Services • Cryptocurrency • NFT • Web3
Own the multi-year technical strategy and architecture for Coinbase’s enterprise IAM platform spanning human, AI agent, service, and workload identities. Drive adoption across 700+ systems, establish authentication and authorization standards, lead migrations and build-versus-buy decisions, automate audit and regulatory controls, reduce standing privilege, and mentor senior engineering talent. Partner across Security, Compliance, IT, Infrastructure, and product teams while influencing technical direction without direct authority.
Top Skills:
AWSDistributed SystemsGenerative AiGoIamOauth 2.0OidcSAMLScimWorkload Identity Federation
Artificial Intelligence • Blockchain • Fintech • Financial Services • Cryptocurrency • NFT • Web3
Design, build, and operate foundational developer infrastructure across CI, build systems, deployment orchestration, and test platforms. Improve build speed, deployment safety, and test reliability while owning services end to end, including SLOs, observability, and on-call responsibilities. Partner with engineering teams to address platform pain points and lead cross-cutting technical projects through production.
Top Skills:
Build SystemsCi/CdDeployment OrchestrationObservabilitySlosTest Infrastructure
What you need to know about the Boston Tech Scene
Boston is a powerhouse for technology innovation thanks to world-class research universities like MIT and Harvard and a robust pipeline of venture capital investment. Host to the first telephone call and one of the first general-purpose computers ever put into use, Boston is now a hub for biotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence — though it’s also home to several B2B software giants. So it’s no surprise that the city consistently ranks among the greatest startup ecosystems in the world.
Key Facts About Boston Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 269,000; 9.4% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Toast, Klaviyo, HubSpot, DraftKings
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, software, aerospace
- Funding Landscape: $15.7 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Summit Partners, Volition Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, MassVentures, Highland Capital Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: MIT, Harvard University, Boston College, Tufts University, Boston University, Northeastern University, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, National Bureau of Economic Research, Broad Institute, Lowell Center for Space Science & Technology, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories
