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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 FCM Tech Lead, 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.
What you'll do:
- Own design and architecture across the FCM core, from market data and order routing through settlement, reporting, and risk.
- Drive the next-gen replatforming effort, reducing 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, scaling engineering quality and helping others grow.
Required Skills and Experience:
- Extensive backend engineering experience, with demonstrated ownership of complex, production-grade distributed systems.
- 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).
- Deep proficiency in a modern backend language (Go preferred; Java or similar) and event-driven, high-availability architectures; familiarity with Ion XTP is a plus.
- Experience in a regulated or financial environment (CFTC/NFA or comparable) where correctness, auditability, and reliability are critical.
- Track record delivering end-to-end, from scoping and architecture through implementation, monitoring, and iteration, including replatforming or migrating off legacy systems while still coding hands-on and raising the quality bar.
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.
Pay Transparency Notice: Base salary varies by location (see range below). Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility, and benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k)).
Annual base salary range (excluding equity and bonus):
$218,025—$256,500 USD
- Application Limit: Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.
- Equal Opportunity Employer: Coinbase is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information. Applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
- US Applicants: View Employee Rights, Know Your Rights, and E-Verify Notice of Participation.
- Accommodations: If you are an individual with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation, email us your request and contact info at accommodations[at]coinbase.com. Need screen reading technology? Click here to download a free compatible screen reader and view the tutorial.
- Data Privacy & Arbitration: By submitting your application, you agree to our Candidate Privacy Notice. US applicants: By submitting your application, you agree to Arbitration of Disputes.