Staff Software Engineer

Coinbase's Developer Infrastructure - Test team exists for one reason: every Coinbase engineer should get fast, reliable test signals so the whole company tests and ships faster. We own test execution at scale — smart test selection, parallelization and sharding, flaky-test detection and remediation, and the observability layer that turns our test suite into a speed advantage rather than a bottleneck.

As AI accelerates the rate of code being written, test infrastructure is becoming the critical path for how quickly Coinbase can deliver value to customers. Slow or flaky tests don't just waste an engineer's afternoon — they slow down the entire company. We're hiring a Staff Software Engineer to join Developer Infrastructure - Test — someone obsessed with speed and reliability who can set the technical direction for how Coinbase tests and ships software at scale, and own it end to end.

What you’ll be doing (ie. job duties):

• Define and own the technical strategy for test infrastructure across all of Coinbase engineering — with speed of feedback as the primary design constraint.
• Build and operate core Developer Infrastructure - Test services: test execution orchestration, smart test selection, parallel sharding, flaky-test detection and suppression, and test result storage and analysis.
• Relentlessly reduce the time between "code written" and "test results in hand" — every minute saved on test feedback compounds across thousands of engineers and PRs per day.
• Drive flakiness rate down so that test signals are trustworthy by default and engineers never waste time re-running or second-guessing results.
• Own your systems end to end — SLOs, observability, on-call — with zero tolerance for correctness issues.
• Partner closely with engineering teams across Coinbase (your customers) to understand where test infrastructure is slowing them down and fix it.
• Mentor engineers across Developer Infrastructure - Test and DevInfra, set technical standards that scale beyond your direct work, and shape how the org approaches test infrastructure problems.

What we look for in you: 

• 10+ years building and operating production software, with strong fundamentals in distributed systems and a primary language like Go (or similar).
• Demonstrated track record of defining and delivering technical strategy for foundational systems — not just shipping features, but setting direction that other teams depend on.
• Deep, hands-on experience in test infrastructure: test execution at scale, flaky-test detection, test selection, sharding, or test result analysis.
• Strong operational instincts — you care about reliability, security, and observability, and your systems reflect that.
• A track record of driving complex, cross-team technical projects to completion — influencing direction and timelines without needing direct authority over the people involved.
• A customer-focused mindset: you measure success by the impact your systems have on the engineers who depend on them.
• Demonstrates the ability to responsibly use generative AI tools and copilots (e.g., LibreChat, Gemini, Glean) in daily workflows, continuously learn as tools evolve, and apply human‑in‑the‑loop practices to deliver business‑ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in efficiency, cost, and quality.

Nice to haves:

• Familiarity with test selection algorithms (change-based, dependency graph, ML-assisted) and the tradeoffs between coverage and speed.
• Experience operating at scale with Kubernetes, AWS, GitHub Actions, Terraform, and containers (Docker/OCI).
• Experience with observability and performance tooling (e.g., Datadog) to measure and improve system behavior — particularly for distributed test execution.
• Curiosity about crypto/web3 (deep prior knowledge not required); experience in a regulated or security-sensitive environment is a plus.

#PID - P76990