Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Risk AI/ML

Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Ready to be pushed beyond what you think you're capable of? At Coinbase, our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world. It's a massive, ambitious opportunity that demands the best of us, every day, as we build the emerging onchain platform — and with it, the future global financial system. To achieve our mission, we're seeking a very specific candidate. We want someone who is passionate about our mission and who believes in the power of crypto and blockchain technology to update the financial system. We want someone who is eager to leave their mark on the world, who relishes the pressure and privilege of working with high caliber colleagues, and who actively seeks feedback to keep leveling up. We want someone who will run towards, not away from, solving the company's hardest problems. Our work culture is intense and isn't for everyone. But if you want to build the future alongside others who excel in their disciplines and expect the same from you, there's no better place to be. While many roles at Coinbase are remote-first, we are not remote-only. In-person participation is required throughout the year. Team and company-wide offsites are held multiple times annually to foster collaboration, connection, and alignment. Attendance is expected and fully supported.

About The Role

The Risk AI/ML team has a critical mission: to foster business growth by effectively managing the financial threats impacting the business and our users. We are on the front lines, building the flexible, scalable, and intelligent systems required to detect and prevent fraud, scams, and account takeovers at scale. As a member of this team, you will build and deploy the sophisticated AI/ML models that power our real-time, near-real-time, and scheduled risk-detection workflows. You will collaborate closely with Platform, Product, Analyst, and Ops teams to uncover new fraud patterns, fight baddies, and continuously improve our defensive capabilities, protecting our good users and the open financial system.

We are looking for a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead the design and implementation of advanced AI/ML models & systems that power our critical risk and fraud-fighting platforms. This role is essential to protecting our good customers by harnessing diverse and extensive data sources, including the blockchain, to grant millions of individuals access to cryptocurrency while simultaneously identifying and thwarting malicious entities. Your work will directly stop fraud, prevent account takeovers, and fight scams. You will operate as both a hands-on technical contributor and AI/ML applied science leader of complex initiatives, setting technical direction across teams, mentoring senior engineers, and ensuring that our AI/ML solutions are robust, efficient, and aligned with company strategy.

What you'll be doing:

• Lead strategic AI/ML initiatives: drive the end-to-end design and deployment of AI/ML models and systems that scale to millions of users. You will investigate and harness cutting-edge methodologies (e.g., large-scale deep learning, LLMs, GNNs, reinforcement learning) to address diverse challenges like fraud detection, recommender systems, feed ranking, and risk assessment.
• Architect scalable models & systems: architect and build production-grade AI/ML models & pipelines, that enable low-latency, high-reliability predictions. You will develop and deploy robust, low-maintenance applied AI/ML solutions
• Drive execution & collaboration: deliver high-quality, measurable results while managing ambiguity, prioritizing technical debt, and ensuring systems evolve with business growth. You must have solid communication skills to collaborate with and influence stakeholders with various technical and non-technical backgrounds.
• Elevate AI/ML & engineering excellence, mentorship: provide technical guidance and mentorship, elevating engineering excellence across the organization. You will help democratize access to AI/ML by creating onboarding codelabs, tools, and infrastructure to foster a culture of widespread AI/ML across the team, org and Coinbase.

What We Look For:

10+ years of professional experience in software engineering and/or AI/ML, including significant experience deploying AI/ML systems into production. A passion for building an open financial system that connects the world and a strong desire to protect good users from bad actors. You are motivated by the challenges of fighting fraud, detecting scams, preventing account takeovers, and generally thwarting "baddies." You exhibit our core cultural values: add positive energy, communicate clearly, be curious, and be a builder. Expertise in one or more areas of applied AI/ML (e.g., Risk ML, Gradient Boosting trees, large-scale deep learning, NLP/LLMs, computer vision, recommender systems, reinforcement learning, GNNs). Strong coding skills (e.g., Python) with deep experience in AI/ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc). Experience building backend systems at scale with a focus on data processing, AI/ML, or analytics. Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-team technical initiatives and deliver impactful AI/ML solutions at scale. Strong communication and leadership skills, with experience influencing technical direction across engineering, product, and leadership teams. A proven track record of mentoring senior engineers and raising the technical bar on engineering teams.

Nice to haves:

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, AI/ML, Data Mining, Statistics, or related technical field.
• Knowledge of modern data and AI/ML infrastructure (e.g., Apache Airflow, Spark, Flink, Kafka/Kinesis, Snowflake, Hadoop, Hive).
• Familiarity with MLOps best practices, including monitoring, retraining, and continuous improvement of production models.
• Experience with model interpretability and responsible AI.
• Experience with data analysis and visualization.

Pay Range: $262,650—$309,000 USD

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.