Senior Staff Protocol Engineer

Senior Staff Protocol Engineer

Base, incubated within Coinbase, is planning to bring a million developers and a billion users onchain. We need your help to make that happen.

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 100×. 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.

What we look for in you:

• 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.

Nice to haves:

• 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 Range: $253,895-$298,700 USD

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.

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.

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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, to assess them against the qualifications and characteristics outlined in the job description.