BitGo secures and processes more institutional digital assets than almost anyone. The company handles over $40 billion in monthly transaction volume, serves more than 1,500 institutional clients, and custodies assets for some of the largest funds, exchanges, and enterprises in crypto. When a hedge fund needs to move $100 million in Bitcoin safely, when an exchange needs hot wallet infrastructure it can trust, when a government seizes crypto assets and needs a custodian — BitGo is often the company that gets the call.
This is not the flashiest corner of crypto. BitGo does not have a consumer app with millions of downloads or a DeFi protocol generating viral attention on Twitter. What it has is the infrastructure that the rest of the industry depends on to function securely. If you are the kind of engineer who finds deep satisfaction in building systems where failure is not an option, BitGo is one of the most compelling places in the entire digital asset ecosystem.
What BitGo Actually Builds
BitGo was founded in 2013 and is credited with inventing multi-signature wallet technology for Bitcoin — the idea that moving funds should require multiple private keys held by different parties, rather than a single point of failure. That innovation remains the conceptual foundation of everything the company builds.
Today, BitGo's product suite includes:
- Qualified Custody — BitGo Trust Company is a regulated qualified custodian under South Dakota banking law. This designation matters enormously to institutional clients: it means BitGo meets specific regulatory requirements for safeguarding client assets, which is a prerequisite for many funds and fiduciaries
- Hot, Warm, and Cold Wallet Infrastructure — A tiered wallet architecture that lets institutions balance security with operational speed. Cold wallets for long-term storage, warm wallets for regular operations, hot wallets for real-time transaction needs
- Multi-signature and MPC Wallets — BitGo supports both traditional multi-sig (requiring multiple key holders to sign) and newer multi-party computation (MPC) wallets that distribute key material without any single party ever holding the complete key
- Trading and Settlement — BitGo Prime offers OTC trading and settlement services, allowing institutions to trade and settle without moving assets between exchanges
- BitGo Portfolio — A portfolio management and reporting platform for institutional investors
- Staking — Institutional staking services for proof-of-stake networks
The company has had a notable corporate history. Galaxy Digital agreed to acquire BitGo in 2021, but the deal collapsed in 2022, leading to a lawsuit that was eventually settled. BitGo has continued operating independently and has raised additional capital, positioning itself as one of the enduring infrastructure companies in the space.
BitGo supports over 700 digital assets across dozens of blockchains. Adding support for a new chain or token is a non-trivial engineering effort that involves building and validating signing logic, transaction construction, fee estimation, and address derivation for each chain's unique architecture.
Engineering Culture
BitGo employs roughly 300-400 people, with engineering as the largest function. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, with offices in New York and distributed team members globally.
The engineering culture at BitGo is defined by one word: security. This is not marketing language — it is an operational reality. When you are responsible for custodying billions of dollars in digital assets, every line of code, every infrastructure decision, and every deployment carries weight. Code reviews are thorough. Security reviews are mandatory for anything touching key management, signing, or transaction processing. Testing is extensive, including adversarial testing scenarios that simulate various failure and attack modes.
This security-first posture shapes the pace of work. BitGo ships more slowly than a consumer startup, and deliberately so. The cost of a bug in a wallet signing service is not a degraded user experience — it is potentially hundreds of millions of dollars lost irrecoverably. Engineers who thrive here are the ones who find satisfaction in getting things right rather than getting things out.
Teams are organized around product areas: wallet infrastructure, key management, blockchain integrations, trading and settlement, and platform services. The blockchain integrations team is particularly interesting because it requires deep knowledge of how different chains handle transactions, signing schemes, and address formats — no two chains work exactly alike, and supporting 700+ assets means maintaining a sprawling matrix of chain-specific logic.
The company operates with a hybrid work model. The Palo Alto office is the primary hub, but remote work is well-established, and the team is distributed enough that asynchronous communication is a core competency.
What Roles They Hire For
BitGo's hiring reflects its focus on security, infrastructure, and institutional service.
Engineering:
- Security engineers (the crown jewel of BitGo hiring — cryptographic systems, HSM management, penetration testing, incident response)
- Backend engineers (wallet infrastructure, transaction processing, API development)
- Blockchain engineers (chain integrations, transaction signing, node management for supported chains)
- Infrastructure/SRE (high-availability systems, HSM infrastructure, secure deployment pipelines)
- Frontend engineers (institutional dashboards, portfolio management interfaces, admin tools)
- QA engineers (test automation with a security focus, adversarial testing)
Product & Design:
- Product managers (institutional custody products, trading infrastructure, compliance tooling)
- Technical product managers (blockchain integration prioritization, API design)
Business:
- Compliance and legal (regulatory reporting, audit coordination, licensing)
- Sales and relationship management (institutional client accounts)
- Solutions engineers (partner integrations, custom deployment support)
- Operations (transaction operations, client onboarding, key ceremony coordination)
The security engineering roles at BitGo are among the most demanding and interesting in crypto. These positions require genuine cryptographic expertise — understanding multi-party computation protocols, hardware security module (HSM) programming, threshold signature schemes, and secure key lifecycle management. If you have this skill set, BitGo is one of a handful of companies where you can apply it to production systems handling billions of dollars.
Tech Stack
BitGo's stack reflects its institutional focus and security requirements:
- Backend: TypeScript and Node.js for the majority of application services. Go for performance-critical infrastructure components and newer services. Rust for cryptographic operations and security-critical modules
- Frontend: React and TypeScript for institutional dashboards and management interfaces
- Cryptographic infrastructure: Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) for key management. Custom implementations of multi-sig and MPC signing protocols. Support for multiple signature schemes (ECDSA, EdDSA, Schnorr) across different blockchains
- Infrastructure: AWS with defense-in-depth security architecture. Kubernetes for orchestration. Strict network segmentation between hot, warm, and cold wallet environments
- Blockchain: Chain-specific integration libraries for 50+ blockchains. Custom node infrastructure for supported chains. UTXO and account-model transaction construction engines
- Data: PostgreSQL for persistent storage. Redis for caching. Comprehensive audit logging for all key operations and transactions
The cryptographic layer is what makes BitGo's stack unique. Working with HSMs, implementing threshold signature schemes, and building secure key management systems are skills you will not develop at most other companies — crypto or otherwise. If you are interested in applied cryptography, this is one of the best places to learn and practice it.
Interview Process
BitGo's interview process is thorough, typically 4-5 rounds over 2-4 weeks:
- Recruiter screen (30 min) — Background, motivation, and role fit. BitGo recruiters typically assess whether you understand the institutional custody space and what draws you to security-focused work
- Technical screen (60 min) — Coding challenge with a focus on correctness and edge case handling rather than pure speed. For security roles, expect cryptography-related problems. For backend roles, expect systems programming and API design questions
- System design (60 min) — Design a secure system: a multi-signature wallet service, a key management pipeline, a high-availability custody platform, or a blockchain transaction processing system. Security considerations are not an afterthought here — they are the primary evaluation criterion
- Security/domain deep dive (60 min) — For security and blockchain roles, this round goes deep on domain expertise. Expect questions about cryptographic primitives, signing algorithms, HSM architecture, or blockchain-specific transaction mechanics. For other roles, this round focuses on technical depth in your area of expertise
- Culture and leadership (45 min) — Behavioral interview with a focus on how you handle high-stakes situations, approach security trade-offs, and communicate with non-technical stakeholders (important given the institutional client base)
Crypto and security domain knowledge matter significantly at BitGo. Understanding how multi-sig wallets work, what MPC is, and how different blockchains handle signing will differentiate you. For security roles specifically, experience with HSMs, key management systems, or cryptographic protocol implementation is often a hard requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
Compensation
BitGo pays competitively for the Palo Alto / Bay Area market, with compensation reflecting the specialized nature of the work.
Approximate ranges (2026, total compensation):
- Junior Engineer: $140k-$190k (base $120k-$150k + equity)
- Mid-level Engineer: $190k-$280k (base $155k-$200k + equity)
- Senior Engineer: $270k-$400k (base $195k-$250k + equity + bonus)
- Staff/Principal Engineer: $370k-$520k (base $240k-$290k + significant equity)
- Security specialists with deep cryptographic expertise can command premiums above these ranges
Equity is private company stock. BitGo has been operating since 2013 and has navigated the failed Galaxy Digital acquisition, so the equity story involves more nuance than a typical high-growth startup. The company remains well-capitalized and is one of the essential infrastructure providers in the industry, but the path to liquidity for employee shares is not clearly defined. Ask detailed questions about equity during the offer stage.
Benefits include competitive health insurance, 401(k), flexible PTO, and remote work flexibility. The Palo Alto office provides the standard Silicon Valley amenities.
Why You Might NOT Want to Work There
BitGo is a strong company with real trade-offs to consider.
The pace is deliberate. If you want to ship features daily and move fast, BitGo's security-first approach will feel slow. Code reviews are extensive, security audits gate deployments, and the bar for correctness in key management systems is extremely high. This is by design, but it requires patience.
The work is not glamorous. Custody infrastructure is essential but invisible. You will not be building the next viral DeFi protocol or consumer wallet. Your work will secure billions of dollars, and almost no one outside the institutional crypto world will know your company's name. If you need public-facing product excitement, this is the wrong place.
Equity uncertainty. BitGo is a 13-year-old private company. The failed Galaxy acquisition and the absence of a clear IPO timeline mean your equity is illiquid with an uncertain path to realization. This is not unusual for private companies, but it is more pronounced at a company that has been around this long without a liquidity event.
Institutional pace, startup resources. At 300-400 people, BitGo is not tiny, but it operates in a space that demands enterprise-grade reliability and compliance. You will sometimes feel the tension between having startup-level resources and institutional-level expectations. Infrastructure teams, in particular, carry heavy responsibility relative to team size.
Niche skill set. The deep security and cryptographic skills you develop at BitGo are extremely valuable but specialized. If you decide to leave for a consumer tech company, not all of your expertise will transfer directly. That said, institutional crypto, traditional finance, and cybersecurity companies will value your experience highly.
Should You Apply?
BitGo is the right choice if you are a security-minded engineer who wants to work on some of the most consequential infrastructure in crypto. The multi-sig and MPC wallet systems, the HSM-backed key management, the chain integration layer supporting hundreds of assets — this is applied cryptography at real scale with real stakes. Few companies offer this combination of technical depth and operational criticality.
It is the wrong choice if you want consumer-facing products, fast shipping cycles, or the excitement of DeFi protocol development. BitGo is infrastructure for institutions, and the work reflects that: methodical, secure, and quietly essential.
Browse open BitGo roles and hundreds of other Web3 positions on gm.careers. For more on security and infrastructure career paths in Web3, see our guide to Web3 career paths.