Former Citadel engineer Francesco Laurita has left Coinbase to take on a new role as a Principal Engineer at Checkr, a startup specialising in background-checking technology, according to a report by eFinancialCareers.
Laurita spent over three years at Coinbase as a Senior Staff Engineer after transitioning from Citadel, where he served as a Director of Engineering for four and a half years. He joined Citadel through its acquisition of Gild, a platform that evaluates developers’ coding skills.
While Coinbase continues to grow, Checkr has been scaling back, recently laying off 32% of its workforce in April to ensure the company’s long-term stability.
Despite the exits, Q3 was Coinbase’s most prolific hiring period since 2022.
This month, the company welcomed Marc Zeitouni as its new Director of Product for the markets team. Zeitouni previously headed product at high-frequency trading firm Tower Research Capital’s global trading systems, and has held several roles in the crypto space, including CTO and Head of Product at Galaxy Digital, Partner at crypto hedge fund Kbit, and most recently CTO at crypto payments company Fun.xyz, where he spent five months before moving to Coinbase.
In addition to new hires, Coinbase is also reportedly welcoming back former employees.
Rob Witoff, the company’s former chief architect, has returned as Head of Platform following stints at Google and VC firm Polychain Capital.
Additionally, associate General Counsel David Shafer rejoined Coinbase in October after a brief 15-month tenure at crypto market maker Wintermute.
