On the Asset Services and Network Enablement teams, Linda works on the “network layer” that connects Coinbase to the broader crypto ecosystem. She helps integrate new blockchains, scale systems like Solana, and manage security and key-management complexity so customers don’t have to.
In this article, she explains how the Platform team turns that infrastructure into reusable, company-wide solutions and how Coinbase’s remote-first culture supports its engineers. She also shares how responsibly using AI has become a core part of her day-to-day, from drafting designs and scaffolding code to accelerating new chain onboarding.
Let’s start with your journey. What first drew you to Coinbase, and how did you end up joining the Platform team in Canada as a software engineer?
My journey began with a bit of curiosity at a local Best Buy. I noticed people lining up for GPUs and wondered what the hype was about. That led me down the rabbit hole of Ethereum mining and, eventually, the underlying mechanics of blockchain technology. When I saw Coinbase expanding its footprint into Canada, I jumped at the opportunity. I wanted to move beyond personal experimentation and immerse myself in the professional blockchain space at a company leading the industry’s evolution.
For someone who’s never heard of Asset Services or Network Enablement, how do you describe what your team does and the impact your work has on Coinbase’s products and customers?
My team acts as the bridge between Coinbase and the broader crypto ecosystem. We integrate new blockchains into the Coinbase platform, ensuring that customers can seamlessly buy, sell, send, and receive tokens on our platforms. Essentially, we handle the complex infrastructure and security of the "Network Layer" so that our customers can manage their assets safely without the technical burden of managing their own private keys.
Platform engineering can feel a bit abstract from the outside. What do you think sets Coinbase’s Platform team apart, and what do you enjoy most about working on foundational systems instead of just a single end-user product?
In Platform Engineering, our "customers" are often our own internal product teams. What sets us apart is our ability to identify patterns across the company. Instead of having multiple product "pillars" build their own individual solutions for the same problem, the Platform team builds a single, high-performance, standardized system that everyone can rely on. I find it incredibly rewarding to build foundational systems where a single optimization we make can improve the experience across the entire suite of Coinbase products.
You’ve grown from software engineer to senior software engineer during your four years at Coinbase. What have been the biggest drivers of that growth, and how has Coinbase supported you in building a long-term engineering career?
The primary driver has been the steady stream of increasingly complex projects. I like to compare it to a video game: as soon as you master one level, the next one introduces new challenges that require a higher skill set. Over the last four years, this "leveling up" hasn't just been about writing code; it’s about cultivating the soft skills—collaboration, cross-functional communication, and architectural problem-solving—needed to lead large-scale initiatives.
Coinbase has supported my long-term career by providing a very transparent 'map' for growth. For every engineering level, there is a clear rubric of expectations, which removes the guesswork from what it takes to get to the next stage. My managers have acted more like coaches—working with me to identify my 'skill gaps' and intentionally assigning me to projects that push me out of my comfort zone.
Looking back over more than four years on the Platform team, what are one or two standout projects that really capture the kind of problems you get to solve and why they’ve been meaningful to you?
A standout project for me was scaling Solana transaction throughput. It was a high-stakes technical challenge that required deep diving into architecture bottlenecks and redesign of a new one. Beyond the code, I had the opportunity to author an engineering blog post detailing the architecture behind our solution. Sharing our findings with the broader developer community and advocating for our engineering approach was an incredibly meaningful milestone in my career.
Coinbase is remote-first, with teams distributed across time zones. What has your experience been like working on a global Platform team from Canada, and how does the remote-first model help the way you collaborate and grow as an engineer?
The remote-first model at Coinbase is built on trust and efficiency. Being based in Canada while collaborating with a mostly US-based team works seamlessly; we sync during overlapping hours and leverage digital tools to stay aligned. This flexibility eliminates the "commute tax," allowing us to spend more energy on creativity and delivery. However, we also recognize the power of human connection—the company supports offsites and in-person meetups when we need to brainstorm or innovate at a faster pace.
Staying at one company for four years is a meaningful choice in tech. What has kept you at Coinbase and on the Platform team over multiple market cycles, and how do you think about stability and career security here?
The constant opportunity for growth, regardless of market conditions. In bull markets, we ship and scale at an incredible pace; in bear markets, we sharpen our tools and refine our infrastructure to ensure we can deliver even higher quality. I believe career security comes from being in an environment that forces you to stay at the cutting edge. As long as I am being challenged and the industry is evolving, Coinbase remains the best place for me to be.
AI is becoming a bigger part of every engineer’s toolkit. How do you personally use AI in your day-to-day work, from building and debugging to experimentation or collaboration?
AI is now a core part of my toolkit. I’ve transitioned to a "prompt-first" workflow, using Claude to help draft technical designs from tickets, scaffold pull requests, and quickly prototype new ideas. Within our team, we’ve even built AI-agentic solutions to accelerate "Network Enablement," allowing us to onboard new blockchains faster than ever before. It has also become my go-to partner for everything from troubleshooting incidents to summarizing meeting action items.
From your perspective, what is Coinbase’s stance on AI, and how do the company’s principles and guardrails around AI influence the way you experiment, ship features, and stay accountable as an engineer?
Coinbase views AI as a massive efficiency multiplier. It allows us to experiment more freely and "fail fast" with less overhead. However, that speed is balanced by a strict commitment to quality. Our principles ensure that while AI helps us build, we remain fully accountable for the results. This means maintaining rigorous unit and integration testing and ensuring that our production code meets the highest standards of security and reliability.
For engineers in Canada considering joining Coinbase, what can they expect from the culture, mentorship, and growth opportunities if they decide to build their careers here?
Expect an "ownership" culture. Here, you aren't just a cog in a machine; you are encouraged to pitch your own ideas and lead their implementation. Mentorship is very structured—managers work closely with you to identify growth gaps and build a clear roadmap to your next level. If you are looking for a place where you can collaborate with world-class engineers and have a clear, supported path for advancement, Coinbase is it.
When you think about the next few years on the Platform team, what are you most excited to build or learn, and why does Coinbase feel like the right place for that next chapter in your engineering career?
I’m most excited about the intersection of AI and crypto. I want to see how we can use AI to unlock product experiences that were previously too complex or resource-heavy to build. Coinbase is the right place for this next chapter because the company is mission-driven and incredibly adaptive. We are focused on using these new technologies to achieve what traditional finance cannot: true global financial freedom.
Information is provided for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell a particular digital asset or to employ a particular investment strategy.
