Own Kubernetes-based compute orchestration for all of Coinbase

Coinbase is hiring a Senior Software Engineer for its Compute Platform team, owning the Kubernetes/Istio-based orchestration infrastructure that every service at Coinbase runs on. The role requires 5+ years of software engineering with 3+ years running Kubernetes-class orchestration systems at scale, plus hands-on AWS/GCP and CNCF ecosystem experience, and explicitly expects applying AI tooling to infrastructure workflows. This interview probes deep distributed-systems and Kubernetes operational depth alongside how candidates use AI responsibly to increase infra team leverage.

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What this interview tests

Kubernetes/Istio cluster management and self-healing automation at scale
Root-causing distributed infrastructure failures
Hands-on AWS/GCP production infra (EC2, EKS, IAM, VPC, networking)
CNCF ecosystem tooling (Helm, Prometheus, ArgoCD, Envoy) applied to real problems
Applying AI tooling to infra workflows with human oversight
Cross-team partnership with Security, Reliability, Observability

Common question themes

Walk through a production incident you diagnosed to root cause in an orchestration system

Describe cluster management tooling/automation you built to reduce on-call toil

How have you delivered compute capabilities like cron scheduling or automated right-sizing?

Detail your hands-on production experience with AWS/GCP infra services

How have you applied CNCF tools (Helm, Prometheus, ArgoCD, Envoy) to solve a real problem?

How have you used AI tooling to improve an infrastructure workflow while maintaining oversight?

How candidates describe it

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