Staff Software Engineer (Institutional, FCM)
Posted Updated
- Coinbase is building the future of regulated derivatives as part of the Institutional Everything Exchange, and Coinbase Financial Markets (CFM) is our CFTC-regulated Futures Commission Merchant - the entity that lets retail and institutional clients trade and clear US futures and options
- As a Staff Software Engineer on the FCM team, you’ll be a hands-on technical anchor across the entire FCM lifecycle: market data, order entry and routing, settlement and money movement, back office reporting, and our in-house risk and liquidation system
- You’ll help lead a major replatforming onto next-gen architecture and reduce legacy vendor dependencies, a rare chance to re-architect a regulated trading platform from the inside, with the ownership of a startup and the reach of Coinbase
- Own design and architecture across the FCM core, from market data and order routing through settlement, reporting, and risk
- Drive the next-gen replatforming and reduce legacy vendor dependencies while raising stability and reliability
- Set the technical bar through code, design reviews, and standards, and pay down the technical debt that matters most
- Partner across pods (execution, risk, lifecycle) and cross-functionally with Product, CFM Risk and Ops, Finance, and Compliance to deliver correct, auditable systems and turn strategy into a roadmap
- Mentor engineers across the team and act as a force multiplier, elevating code quality and architectural rigor
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality
- Track record delivering end-to-end - scoping, architecture, implementation, monitoring, and iteration - including replatforming or migrating off legacy systems, while still coding hands-on and raising the quality bar
- Deep proficiency in a modern backend language (Go preferred; Java or similar) and event-driven, high-availability architectures
- Direct FCM or derivatives experience, with hands-on ownership of one or more parts of the futures trade lifecycle (settlement, clearing, margin/risk, order entry/routing, market data, or back office/books and records). Ion XTP or comparable exchange platform experience preferred
- 8+ years of backend engineering experience, with demonstrated ownership of complex, production-grade distributed systems
- Experience in a regulated or financial environment (CFTC/NFA or comparable) where correctness, auditability, and reliability are critical