Senior Infra Engineer at Coinbase - Remote Canada — Columbus
Traveler-Friendly Insight
Remote-First but Not Fully Async: Coinbase describes itself as "remote-first, but not remote-only." The key constraint for nomads is the quarterly "surges" — mandatory in-person working sessions. This means you must be available and willing to travel to a Coinbase office (likely in North America) four times a year, which may require maintaining a stable address or reliable travel access.
Timezone Flexibility: The posting does not specify required working hours, which suggests reasonable async flexibility for daily tasks. However, given the infrastructure/on-call nature of the role (incident response, operational excellence), expect some synchronous overlap with a North American timezone — likely UTC-8 to UTC-5. Nomads in Lisbon (UTC+1) or Medellín (UTC-5) are well-positioned; Bangkok (UTC+7) would require significant schedule adjustment for team overlap.
Visa Considerations: The role is headquartered in Canada, so Canadian work authorization is likely required. Non-Canadian nomads should verify eligibility carefully. If already authorized in Canada, popular nomad destinations with digital nomad visa programs include Portugal, Mexico, and Colombia for extended stays outside Canada.
Salary vs. Cost of Living (CAD $191,100 ≈ USD ~$140K):
- Lisbon: Very comfortable — monthly costs ~$2,500–$3,500 for a quality lifestyle.
- Bangkok: Exceptional purchasing power — monthly costs ~$1,500–$2,500.
- Medellín: Strong value — monthly costs ~$1,500–$2,200.
No explicit coworking or equipment stipend is mentioned, though Coinbase's scale suggests standard remote work support exists.
Headquarters: Remote - Canada
Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? At Coinbase, we are uncompromising on our mission to increase economic freedom. The bar is high, the environment is intense, and we like it that way. This isn't a place for complacency — it's a place to be pushed past your perceived limits. If you're ready to build the future of finance alongside people who refuse to settle for "good enough," you belong here.
Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called "surges." Learn more about working at Coinbase.
As a Senior Software Engineer on the Compute Platform team within the Platform group, you'll own the primary compute orchestration infrastructure that every service at Coinbase runs on. Built largely on CNCF technologies including Kubernetes and Istio, this platform underpins the scalability, reliability, and efficiency of our entire product suite. You'll design and ship tooling, automation, and net-new capabilities that make it easy for hundreds of engineers to deploy and operate critical services, while partnering closely with Security, Reliability, and Observability teams to raise the bar across the stack.
What you'll do:
- Own the design, build, and operation of Kubernetes cluster management tooling and automation that keeps our compute platform reliable and self-healing at scale.
- Build developer-facing tooling and workflows that improve how engineers across Coinbase interact with Kubernetes, with a heavy emphasis on integrating AI-driven processes and support.
- Deliver net-new compute capabilities for service owners, such as one-off jobs, cron scheduling, deployment strategies, EFS support, and automated right-sizing.
- Drive operational excellence by automating toil, reducing on-call burden, and continuously improving platform observability and incident response.
- Partner with Security, Reliability, and Observability teams to ensure the compute platform meets Coinbase's standards for security, uptime, and performance.
Required Skills and Experience:
- 5+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years building and operating Kubernetes or similar compute orchestration systems (e.g., Mesos, Nomad, ECS).
- Hands-on experience with AWS and/or GCP infrastructure services (e.g., EC2, EKS, IAM, VPC, networking) in a production environment at scale.
- Demonstrated ability to design, implement, and operate distributed infrastructure systems, including diagnosing complex failures and driving them to root-cause resolution.
- Hands-on experience with the CNCF ecosystem (e.g., Helm, Prometheus, ArgoCD, Envoy) and a track record of applying these tools to solve real infrastructure problems.
- Proven ability to apply AI tooling to infrastructure workflows, improving automation, developer productivity, or operational efficiency.
- 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: The target annual base salary for this position can range as detailed below. Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility and benefits (including medical, dental, and vision).
Annual base salary range (excluding equity and bonus): $191,100 CAD
- 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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