Set the multi-year technical strategy for Coinbase's AI-ready data infrastructure

Coinbase is hiring a Senior Staff Software Engineer (12+ years, reporting to the Senior Director of Engineering) to own technical strategy and architecture for its entire Data Platform — ingestion, transformation, warehousing, streaming, and serving — while transitioning the org from managed-service dependency to engineering-built, platform-grade infrastructure that powers fraud detection and multi-agent AI systems. This is a cross-org, staff-level architecture and influence role, not a hands-on IC ticket-taker position.

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What this interview tests

End-to-end technical strategy for a full data domain across multiple teams
Migrating from managed-service dependency to engineering-built platform infrastructure
Data architecture for ML/AI workloads: feature stores, real-time inference, multi-agent systems
Streaming and near-real-time data pipelines (CDC, Kafka, Databricks, Snowflake)
Cross-functional alignment and leadership without direct authority
Reasoning about performance, reliability, cost, security, and privacy across the data lifecycle

Common question themes

Describe owning architecture and technical strategy for an entire data domain across teams

Walk through moving a system from managed-service dependency to platform-grade, in-house infrastructure

How would you architect a data platform to natively support ML training and real-time inference

Design a migration from batch to near-real-time data availability for fraud detection

How do you build alignment with senior leadership and cross-functional partners on technical trade-offs

How do you elevate senior engineering talent while still being the primary technical voice for your domain

How candidates describe it

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

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Interviewed January 2023 · Not specified

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All Coinbase Senior Staff Software Engineer interviews

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