What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Staff Protocol Engineer position at Coinbase?
Base is planning to bring a million developers and a billion users onchain. We need your help to make that happen.
We believe that the onchain platform is the most important builder platform since the internet ("online"). We believe that the onchain platform should be open source, free to use, and globally available. And we believe that in order to make it really work, we need all hands on deck, working together to scale in a secure, decentralized, easy-to-use way.
At Base, we live by our Stay Based values: we do the right thing, work hard, stay optimistic, prioritize the team, and push creative boundaries—all while building the future of onchain. We value a Zone 3 work ethic, where our team rises to the challenge, embraces hard weeks, and makes small to significant personal tradeoffs when necessary to drive impact and innovation.
Base is incubated within Coinbase and plans to progressively decentralize in the years ahead. We believe that decentralization is critical to creating an open, global crypto economy that is accessible to everyone.
Base is built on Optimism's open-source OP Stack. We're joining as the second Core Dev team working on the OP Stack to ensure it's a public good available to everyone; and contributing a portion of sequencer revenue to funding public goods.
We are looking for a Senior Staff Protocol Engineer to join the Base Protocols team to enable and accelerate the success of Base. The Base Protocols team works on the software and infrastructure systems that power all aspects of the Base chain. We contribute to the open source OP-Stack, perform research and development for scaling both Ethereum L1 and L2's, maintain the critical server infrastructure for chain components, and enable new possibilities with ZK systems.The emphasis of this role is scaling the throughput of Base chain 100x. You'll be working deeply on both research and implementation of scaling the chain to enable Base to bring the next billion users onchain.
What you'll be doing:
Pay Transparency Notice: Depending on your work location, the target annual base salary for this position can range as detailed below. Full time offers from Coinbase also include bonus eligibility equity eligibility benefits (including medical, dental, vision and 401(k)).
Base salary range shown. Total compensation also includes equity and bonus eligibility and benefits:
$253,895—$298,700 USD
Please be advised that each candidate may submit a maximum of four applications within any 30-day period. We encourage you to carefully evaluate how your skills and interests align with Coinbase's roles before applying.
Commitment to Equal Opportunity
Coinbase is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation or any other basis protected by applicable law. Coinbase will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. For US applicants, you may view the Employee Rights and the Know Your Rights notices by clicking on their corresponding links. Additionally, Coinbase participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law.
Coinbase is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please contact us at accommodations[at]coinbase.com to let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. For quick access to screen reading technology compatible with this site click here to download a free compatible screen reader (free step by step tutorial can be found here).
Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates and Applicants
Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. Our full notice outlining how data will be processed as part of the application procedure for applicable locations is available here. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. For US applicants only, by submitting your application you are agreeing to arbitration of disputes as outlined here.
AI Disclosure
For select roles, Coinbase is piloting an AI tool based on machine learning technologies to conduct initial screening interviews to qualified applicants. The tool simulates realistic interview scenarios and engages in dynamic conversation. A human recruiter will review your interview responses, provided in the form of a voice recording and/or transcript, to assess them against the qualifications and characteristics outlined in the job description.
For select roles, Coinbase is also piloting an AI interview intelligence platform to transcribe and summarize interview notes, allowing our interviewers to fully focus on you as the candidate.
The above pilots are for testing purposes and Coinbase will not use AI to make decisions impacting employment. To request a reasonable accommodation due to disability, please contact accommodations[at]coinbase.com.
We believe that the onchain platform is the most important builder platform since the internet ("online"). We believe that the onchain platform should be open source, free to use, and globally available. And we believe that in order to make it really work, we need all hands on deck, working together to scale in a secure, decentralized, easy-to-use way.
At Base, we live by our Stay Based values: we do the right thing, work hard, stay optimistic, prioritize the team, and push creative boundaries—all while building the future of onchain. We value a Zone 3 work ethic, where our team rises to the challenge, embraces hard weeks, and makes small to significant personal tradeoffs when necessary to drive impact and innovation.
Base is incubated within Coinbase and plans to progressively decentralize in the years ahead. We believe that decentralization is critical to creating an open, global crypto economy that is accessible to everyone.
Base is built on Optimism's open-source OP Stack. We're joining as the second Core Dev team working on the OP Stack to ensure it's a public good available to everyone; and contributing a portion of sequencer revenue to funding public goods.
We are looking for a Senior Staff Protocol Engineer to join the Base Protocols team to enable and accelerate the success of Base. The Base Protocols team works on the software and infrastructure systems that power all aspects of the Base chain. We contribute to the open source OP-Stack, perform research and development for scaling both Ethereum L1 and L2's, maintain the critical server infrastructure for chain components, and enable new possibilities with ZK systems.The emphasis of this role is scaling the throughput of Base chain 100x. You'll be working deeply on both research and implementation of scaling the chain to enable Base to bring the next billion users onchain.
What you'll be doing:
- Lead the research and development of new initiatives for improving and scaling Base's throughput.
- Hack on both execution and consensus client internals (geth, reth, lighthouse, etc.) to extend capacity and capabilities of these systems well beyond current standards.
- Improve OP stack through efforts such as reducing the footprint of data that needs to be made L1-available.
- Helping with important external scaling efforts such as PeerDAS
- Drive the technical direction, establish roadmaps, communicate and collaborate with cross-functional teams and the wider Ethereum ecosystem to define requirements, and ensure alignment with project goals while taking a proactive approach.
- You have at least 10 years of experience in software engineering, and a background of research in scaling, parallelization, protocols, or distributed databases
- A track record of proven leadership around successfully scaling an existing high throughput system.
- Some understanding of EVM and client software, such as geth or reth internals (deep understanding of either a huge plus).
- Familiarity with database internals and high performance database systems.
- Understanding of the Ethereum scaling roadmap, and onchain-forward knowledge more generally.
- You're familiar with current trends and best practices in architecture including security, performance, and usability.
- You have executive communication skills to work crossfunctionally and collaborate closely with designers, engineers, and product managers.
- You have a PhD with emphasis in Distributed Systems or similar
- Experience in software parallelization, including but not limited to optimistic concurrency and operation pipelining.
- Understanding of optimized approaches to Ethereum state management such as Erigon/Reth's flat DB, FirewoodDB, MonadDB, etc.
- Understanding of compilers and JIT compilation
- Deep Rust and/or Go experience
- Active contributions to open source onchain projects
- You've written publications, have patents or have deep a deep research background
Pay Transparency Notice: Depending on your work location, the target annual base salary for this position can range as detailed below. Full time offers from Coinbase also include bonus eligibility equity eligibility benefits (including medical, dental, vision and 401(k)).
Base salary range shown. Total compensation also includes equity and bonus eligibility and benefits:
$253,895—$298,700 USD
Please be advised that each candidate may submit a maximum of four applications within any 30-day period. We encourage you to carefully evaluate how your skills and interests align with Coinbase's roles before applying.
Commitment to Equal Opportunity
Coinbase is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation or any other basis protected by applicable law. Coinbase will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. For US applicants, you may view the Employee Rights and the Know Your Rights notices by clicking on their corresponding links. Additionally, Coinbase participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law.
Coinbase is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please contact us at accommodations[at]coinbase.com to let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. For quick access to screen reading technology compatible with this site click here to download a free compatible screen reader (free step by step tutorial can be found here).
Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates and Applicants
Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. Our full notice outlining how data will be processed as part of the application procedure for applicable locations is available here. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. For US applicants only, by submitting your application you are agreeing to arbitration of disputes as outlined here.
AI Disclosure
For select roles, Coinbase is piloting an AI tool based on machine learning technologies to conduct initial screening interviews to qualified applicants. The tool simulates realistic interview scenarios and engages in dynamic conversation. A human recruiter will review your interview responses, provided in the form of a voice recording and/or transcript, to assess them against the qualifications and characteristics outlined in the job description.
For select roles, Coinbase is also piloting an AI interview intelligence platform to transcribe and summarize interview notes, allowing our interviewers to fully focus on you as the candidate.
The above pilots are for testing purposes and Coinbase will not use AI to make decisions impacting employment. To request a reasonable accommodation due to disability, please contact accommodations[at]coinbase.com.
Salary : $253,895 - $298,700