Leaving a company you love isn’t easy. Coming back? Even rarer. After a year spent building a charitable foundation, traveling internationally, and enjoying family life, Joshua Ostrom couldn’t resist the pull of tough technical challenges and high‑caliber teams at Coinbase.
From day one, Coinbase’s mission and culture drew him in, but it was the way teammates invested in each other’s growth that truly stood out. “The coaching I received here was the best of my career,” he says. “The team leans into collaborative growth, taking time to teach and unblock each other more than any company I’ve worked with.”
In this piece, we explore Joshua’s journey at Coinbase, the company’s flexibility, and how stepping into a challenging new role as a Security Platform Engineering Manager made his return both exciting and seamless.
Let’s start with your career journey. Can you share what first brought you to Coinbase originally?
I first interviewed at Coinbase for a Senior Software Engineer role on the Security Engineering team, which focuses on customer and platform protection, after a recruiter reached out. At that point, I’d been working remotely for about 10 years, mostly with FinTech and AdTech startups in New York, California, and Texas but Coinbase captured my interest for four key reasons:
The Mission: Coinbase’s mission to increase economic freedom in the world deeply resonated with me. With friends who are immigrants and send money back to their families, I have seen the real impact of the reduced friction and cost in international value transfer.
Trading Capability: With 12 years of trading equities, derivatives, and futures, working on a trading platform perfectly blended my skills and interests, especially with clearer crypto taxation.
Working in Crypto: I loved the continuous challenge and innovation in AdTech. Crypto presented that at a larger scale with new regulations, evolving tech stacks, and groundbreaking innovation. Bitcoin, in particular, seemed like an asymmetric opportunity too compelling to ignore.
Flexibility: Coinbase’s remote-first culture was a perfect fit as relocation was always a non-starter for me.
As a Sr. Software Engineer focused on Security, what kind of work did you do during your first 4 years here?
My first four years at Coinbase were fantastic. Our team grew 6x, and I was promoted to Staff Engineer within 11 months. I briefly served as an Engineering Manager before returning to Staff during crypto winter to align with company needs. We focused on crypto key management, threat identification, and security scanning.
I thoroughly enjoyed mentoring team members and interns, many of which became fellow engineers. The coaching I received at Coinbase was the best of my career, and it was rewarding to see the company evolve from a scrappy startup to a public entity without losing its core culture. As I was leaving, I personally thanked Brian for the opportunity and the financial freedom I gained, and I remain grateful for my time here.
After your initial time at Coinbase, you took a year-long break to launch a charitable foundation and travel. Can you share more about that experience and what inspired you to take that step?
Leaving Coinbase was really tough but driven by a few converging factors.
Personally: I wanted to spend more time with my family on our farm and be present for our kids’ activities. We planned international travel, including their first trip abroad, and a magical week in New York during the holidays.
Financially: Leaving gave me even more flexibility to kickstart our charitable foundation so we could do more for communities, sooner.
Health: I wanted space to investigate a decline in my memory without the pressure of work.
It wasn't easy to leave a job I truly enjoyed, but I was ready for a new challenge and to slow down. Especially so we could focus on establishing a charitable foundation to give back in perpetuity to education, medical research, and religious avenues.
How did your time away—both through giving back and traveling—shape your perspective on work and life?
The biggest take away is that I felt some level of obligation to still use my skills to help others. Working becomes a win-win, if I get to help others who haven’t had the same opportunities I’ve had and do something I love. It seems a little selfish to not give back.
Traveling just underscored that. I was humbled by how opportunities and hard work gave me time and space to use my skill sets in other ways. Looking back it enhanced my appreciation for the work opportunities I experienced over my career.
What motivated you to return to Coinbase, and was there a specific moment or opportunity that made you realize “this is the right time”?
While there are many factors involved in a decision like this it came down to four key things made the timing right:
Challenge and learning: I missed tough technical problems and colleagues who pushed me to grow. Also, AI was reaching an inflection point, and I wanted to be at the forefront of applying it in my domain.
Mood and meaning: I found myself in a rare low mood; re-entering the workforce offered purpose, structure, and the intellectual challenge I thrive on.
Equity tailwind: As an investor, I saw a favorable setup in COIN that made the equity component particularly compelling.
Role and manager: The stars aligned and an Engineering Manager opening at Coinbase popped up on LinkedIn with a hiring manager I deeply respected. This was an ideal path back into management to mentor engineers while also helping shape vision and roadmaps.
How did the culture at Coinbase play into your decision to come back, and what aspects felt compelling the second time around?
The culture and the peer set drew me back.
On the culture front, positive energy and continuous learning always resonated with me. Coinbase stands out across my tech roles for the balance of driven yet humble colleagues. The team leans into collaborative growth, taking time to teach and unblock each other more than any company I’ve worked with. Doing that in a remote environment speaks to the quality of hiring and top‑down alignment on our cultural tenets.
There’s a great combination of builders and a quickly evolving crypto ecosystem that makes solving problems no one has solved before fun. I always enjoy that greenfield side.
On the peer set, I underestimated how much I enjoyed being around articulate, high‑performing teammates. It accelerates your learning, and I missed that. If you haven’t been on a high‑performing team, jump on those opportunities. Your career journey is finite, and it’s rewarding to look back and see you’ve pushed yourself, high‑caliber peers help you do that.
Was there anything difficult about coming back to Coinbase, or any adjustments you had to make after your time away?
The calendar is no longer unbounded—that was the biggest adjustment. Coinbase has a great culture of work and recharge; I plan roughly a week per quarter to unplug (I’ll be hiking in Sedona soon). With our kids in school, most activities are after hours, so I can make most events, which is incredibly rewarding. I do have a son that really wants retirement to happen to build legos together which is constrained to nights / weekends again now.
Remote work helps. Similar to my first tenure, I’ll spend some time working from our RV. A few weeks a year driving evenings and weekends, then working during the day, lets me enjoy a change of scenery while still moving the needle at work.
Many routines from my break carried over. Morning coffee runs and early workouts fit nicely before starting my day at Coinbase and softened the loss of complete freedom.
In your experience, how has Coinbase evolved, whether in company culture, engineering philosophy, or product vision, since your first time here?
Growth across the board—maturation if I had to give a one-word answer.
Things feel polished. Onboarding is refined, and the engineering infrastructure just works. The company has dialed in the remote-first experience with a balanced cadence of quarterly in-person time. Brand recognition has also grown. In rural Indiana during my first four years, most people hadn’t heard of Coinbase; now, it feels like 80%+ know the brand.
Engineering has shifted from “build fast” to building durable capabilities other teams can reuse. This unlocks more than single‑point solutions. We previously had more silos and overlapping work; that’s much improved. We’re not perfect, but far ahead of where we were when I joined.
Can you describe your current role within Security Engineering and share a project or challenge you’re excited about right now?
I lead a team of eight engineers focused on transactional risk—policy checks and intent integrity before broadcasting transactions onchain. We ensure compliance with regulations like OFAC and KYC and monitor that intent doesn’t change during a transaction’s lifecycle.
A project I’m excited about: refactoring our transactional intent/attestation platform into a more durable, modular system. It’s a great opportunity to take a working system and restructure it for scale. This is great hands-on learning and mentorship for the team.
As both an engineer and manager in a builder culture, I still contribute individually. Coinbase expects everyone to be building on some level, so I’ve been automating parts of my role with AI, which lets me apply the latest technology and lead by example.
How does your work improve Coinbase’s security, and what decisions have the biggest impact on the customers?
Crypto is unforgiving; immutable transactions require full confidence that customer intent is honored and unchanged. Being the final check before broadcasting on various blockchains is the final mile of impact. It’s incredibly important work that keeps my team close to the blockchain and ensures Coinbase remains the most trusted in the industry. Extending institutional‑level controls to everyday retail customers lets my team live our mission to enable economic freedom, with the same rigor for small accounts as mega‑cap institutions demand.
For engineering candidates evaluating Coinbase, what would you highlight about the work, people, and opportunities, especially from your unique perspective of having experienced it twice?
Let me highlight a few patterns I’ve observed of what types of engineers excel at Coinbase.
Action oriented engineers. Act like an owner is one of our cultural tenants and we want builders. Simple analogy - if we’re walking in the park together I want the candidate that’s going to stop to pick up the discarded can and throw it in the trash. Why? They’re seeing the shortcoming and taking the initiative to do it themselves.
Candidates with truly positive energy. The recruiting team does a fantastic job finding talent with this trait. My entire team shares it, and I’d argue most of the company fits the same mold. We love what we do and look for candidates who add to that energy.
Continuous learning rounds us out. Crypto changes, tech changes, regulations change we are at the intersection of all three. Don’t come to Coinbase if you don’t like to learn. If you are wildly curious and love solving new problems, then by all means come join us as we effect economic freedom - it’s rewarding, challenging and frankly fun.
It’s a whole new set of challenges and opportunities now that crypto has become a global asset class. Many of the roads Coinbase has paved have helped not only us but others in the industry.
The mission is ambitious, the impact is global, the risk asymmetric and the peers are second to none - definitely worth a look at Coinbase. To the moon!
Interested in joining Coinbase? Explore our company profile on The Muse and browse our open positions!
