Trade Surveillance Associate
Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? At Coinbase, we are uncompromising on our mission to increase economic freedom. The bar is high, the environment is intense, and we like it that way. This isn't a place for complacency, it’s a place to be pushed past your perceived limits. If you're ready to build the future of finance alongside people who refuse to settle for "good enough," you belong here. Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called “surges.” learn more about working at Coinbase.
As a Trade Surveillance Associate on the Trade Surveillance team within Compliance, you'll help keep Coinbase the most trusted platform in the space by monitoring markets, investigating suspicious trading behavior, and enforcing Coinbase's Trading Rules. This team leverages surveillance technologies to detect and escalate potential market manipulation, disruptive trading activity, and policy violations across Coinbase's markets. You'll review and investigate surveillance alerts, support new asset launches with market assessments, and collaborate with compliance and engineering teams to strengthen the surveillance program.
What you'll do:
- Investigate alerts generated by surveillance systems on a daily, weekly, and monthly cadence, analyzing trading patterns to identify potential violations including spoofing, wash trading, and other manipulative activity, and escalating findings as needed.
- Execute market assessments for new asset launches and relaunches following trading halts, evaluating market depth, liquidity, and trading behavior relative to other assets and exchanges.
- Strengthen Coinbase's Trading Rules and surveillance policies by identifying gaps, recommending enhancements, and partnering with engineering and support staff to build process efficiencies and system improvements.
- Collaborate with compliance colleagues across Coinbase business lines on investigations, regulatory requests, and inquiries, ensuring thorough documentation and timely resolution.
- Monitor regulatory and market structure developments that may affect Coinbase's markets, proactively advising the team on changes that impact the scope or approach of the surveillance program.
Required Skills and Experience:
- 2+ years of relevant experience in market surveillance, trade monitoring, or a trading capacity at a regulated entity (exchange, broker-dealer, or comparable).
- Working knowledge of applicable securities, commodities, or digital asset laws, regulations, and market structure, with the ability to apply them to surveillance scenarios.
- Demonstrated ability to analyze trading data, identify patterns of potential market manipulation, and document findings in clear, well-organized investigative reports and memoranda.
- Experience with surveillance technologies and data tools, with the ability to develop and implement monitoring reports and leverage data (e.g., SQL) to support investigations.
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.
- Application Limit: Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.
- Equal Opportunity Employer: Coinbase is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information. Applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
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- Accommodations: If you are an individual with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation, email us your request and contact info at accommodations[at]coinbase.com. Need screen reading technology? Click here to download a free compatible screen reader and view the tutorial.
- Data Privacy & Arbitration: By submitting your application, you agree to our Candidate Privacy Notice. US applicants: By submitting your application, you agree to Arbitration of Disputes.
Best personality fits for this role
Your meticulous attention to detail ensures you catch subtle signs of market abuse.
Read the ISTJ career guide →Your analytical thinking is perfect for dissecting complex trading patterns and spotting manipulation.
Read the INTJ career guide →Your strong sense of order helps enforce trading rules and maintain compliance standards.
Read the ESTJ career guide →