Principal Engineer, Data Engineering

Overview

Reports To Director, Engineering, Coin Desk

Coin Desk is the most trusted media, events, indices and data company for the global crypto economy. Since 2013, Coin Desk Media has led the story of the future of money and investing, illuminating the transformation in society and culture that comes with it. Our award-winning team of journalists delivers news and unparalleled insights. Coin Desk Events gathers the global crypto, blockchain and Web3 communities at annual events such as Consensus, the world’s largest and longest-running crypto festival.

Coin Desk Indices offers expertise in digital asset indices, data and research to educate and empower investors. For more information on Coin Desk media and events, please visit  and

In November 2023, Coin Desk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated digital assets exchange. Coin Desk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence.

Engineering Organisation & Culture

At Coin Desk, we do more than report on the future of money; we actively help shape it. As the global leader in crypto news, indices, and events, we provide the transparency and context the world needs to understand the digital asset revolution. Our team is dedicated to a shared mission of informing, educating, and connecting the global community. Our impact is amplified by our position within the Bullish Group.

Coin Desk is powered by a partner that shares our belief in the transformative power of digital assets.

We value engineers who treat development as a craft and own the outcome from concept to deployment. You will be expected to navigate the unknown, bring structure to ambiguity, and help shape the frameworks and processes that drive our global teams forward. We seek problem solvers who thrive on high-impact technical challenges.

The Coin Desk Data Engineering Team builds the high-performance infrastructure that powers the world’s most trusted crypto market data, architecting resilient systems that process over 26 billion monthly requests for real-time market information. Our scope includes automated extraction and normalization of data from global exchanges served via high-throughput REST APIs, Web Socket streaming, and direct client deliveries. We own mission-critical infrastructure and help calculate flagship indices that power large ETFs, bridging creative freedom with institutional-grade stability.

As a core part of the global leader in crypto news and indices, our work provides the transparency and context necessary to help shape the future of money.

• Drive Technical Evolution:
  Develop and champion a cohesive, long-term technical roadmap that elevates existing services (internal, external, REST, streaming) toward a unified and scalable architectural vision.
• Architect for the Future:
  Lead the design of resilient, high-throughput systems, ensuring new solutions are robust, secure, and set the standard for future development across teams.
• Tackle Foundational Challenges:
  Act as the technical point person for complex cross-team challenges, ensuring data resiliency, uptime, and evolving client-facing infrastructure without service interruption.
• Elevate Engineering Excellence:
  Mentor senior engineers on advanced architectural patterns, trade-offs, and operational best practices, fostering technical curiosity and ownership.
• Champion Cross-Cutting Initiatives:
  Identify and lead engineering-wide improvements in observability, developer tooling, and testing strategies to increase performance and reliability across all services.

• Principal-Level
  
  Experience:
  
  8+ years in backend development with a proven track record in a Staff, Principal, or equivalent technical leadership role directing multiple services.
• Expertise in Distributed Systems:
  Hands-on experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
  
  Experience with synchronous (REST) and asynchronous (Web Sockets, Kafka/Rabbit
  
  MQ, event streams) patterns.
• Operational Resilience:
  Experience with high availability or sophisticated disaster recovery strategies for global, 24/7…