Senior Staff AI Engineer at Coinbase - Remote USA — Columbus
Traveler-Friendly Insight
Remote-First, But With Quarterly Commitments: This role is officially remote-first, but Coinbase requires quarterly in-person "surge" sessions. As a nomad, you must plan your travel calendar around these gatherings — typically 4 times per year. The exact locations aren't specified, but they're likely US-based, meaning international travelers need to ensure valid US entry rights (visa or ESTA) each quarter.
Timezone Constraints: Although the job doesn't mandate specific hours, the role involves close collaboration with Legal leadership (VP of Legal, CCO). These executives are almost certainly US-timezone based, meaning async work is partially possible but regular overlap with US business hours (ET/PT) is practically required for this senior embedded role.
Eligibility Note: The job listing is explicitly US-based and references US-specific legal notices (E-Verify, EEOC). This strongly suggests US work authorization is required — limiting this role for most international nomads unless they hold a valid US work visa.
Salary vs. Nomad Cost of Living: The $254K–$299K USD base is exceptional purchasing power abroad:
- Lisbon: A comfortable lifestyle runs ~$3,500–$4,500/month — this salary covers it more than 5x over.
- Bangkok: High-end living costs ~$2,000–$3,000/month — leaving substantial savings potential.
- Medellín: ~$1,800–$2,500/month for a comfortable lifestyle — extremely favorable ratio.
However, US tax obligations follow US citizens globally, so a tax advisor familiar with FEIE/FTC is essential if living abroad.
Headquarters: Remote - USA
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.
Coinbase's Legal organization manages corporate governance across 60+ global subsidiaries, public company reporting, institutional client agreements, and product counsel for every product group. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, Legal Automation, you'll join this team to architect and deliver the AI-native platform that transforms high-volume legal workflows into scalable, automated systems. You'll embed directly with Legal leadership, prototype the highest-leverage opportunities, and ship production-grade AI agents that set the standard for how non-technical orgs at Coinbase operate with AI.
What You'll Do
- Embed with Legal leadership to develop ground-level understanding of workflows, join planning sessions, and identify the automation opportunities with the greatest business impact.
- Architect and deliver production-grade AI systems with built-in auditability, observability, human-in-the-loop design, and guardrails from day one.
- Own the Legal automation roadmap in partnership with the VP of Legal and CCO, translating complex legal workflows into engineering requirements and engineering constraints back to legal stakeholders.
- Define the build-vs-buy strategy for Legal tooling, evaluating what Coinbase should build internally, integrate from partner teams, or retire.
- Serve as the technical thought partner to Legal leadership, surfacing engineering risk early and keeping legal and engineering teams aligned on priorities and tradeoffs.
Required Skills and Experience
- 12+ years of backend software engineering with a track record of shipping production systems at scale in ambiguous, greenfield environments.
- Proven experience deploying LLM-based applications to production, including evaluation frameworks, grounding, hallucination guardrails, and human-in-the-loop design.
- Multi-agent orchestration experience designing and operating systems where multiple AI agents collaborate, hand off work, and escalate to humans appropriately.
- Demonstrated ability to rapidly learn from non-technical domain experts, internalize complex workflows, and translate them into engineering requirements and reusable platform primitives.
- Distributed systems fundamentals including document processing, routing logic, structured evaluation, and audit trails.
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.
Job ID: P77646
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): $253,895 — $298,700 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.
To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/coinbase-senior-staff-software-engineer-legal-automation
Frequently Asked Questions
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