Senior backend engineer owning foundational data infrastructure — warehouses, Airflow, Spark, Kafka — for Coinbase's Data Platform team

This Senior Software Engineer role on Coinbase's remote-Canada Data Platform team (within Platform group) owns the design and operation of data warehouses, orchestration, streaming, and self-service data tooling used across the company. The JD requires 5+ years of backend engineering with hands-on production experience in Python/Go/Java, data infrastructure patterns, and tools like Airflow, Spark, and Kafka, plus data security/observability systems. Expect interview questions probing production data systems design, reliability at scale, and Coinbase's own note that it pilots AI-driven screening interviews.

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What this interview tests

Data warehouse and data lake architecture
Pipeline orchestration with Airflow and batch processing with Spark
Streaming systems with Kafka and real-time event aggregation
Data security, access control, lineage, and observability
Backend service design in Python, Go, or Java at scale
Cross-functional platform partnership with analysts, ML engineers, compliance

Common question themes

Design a self-service data pipeline platform for internal teams

How would you architect access control and lineage tracking across storage layers

Walk through a production incident in a Spark/Airflow/Kafka pipeline you owned

Explain scale-out architecture trade-offs: caching layers vs key/value stores vs columnar storage

How do you turn a one-off data request into a reusable platform pattern

Describe how you use generative AI responsibly in your engineering workflow

How candidates describe it

Real Senior Software Engineer - Data Platform interview stories — retold from candidates' public write-ups, with sources.

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