Went through the Coinbase design loop about two months ago. Staff-level role, consumer product team. I want to share specifics because the design interview landscape is all generic advice and I wanted real data when I was prepping.
Portfolio presentation: One hour. They asked me to pick two projects. I picked one from a complex financial product (not crypto) and one from a consumer mobile app. The first one landed much better. Coinbase's design bar is heavily weighted toward designing for complexity. Crypto trading is inherently complex information. They want to see how you make hard data digestible.
In both cases they focused their questions on: how did you figure out what the user actually needed, what did you learn from research that changed your initial direction, and what tradeoffs did you make when product and engineering pushed back.
They were NOT interested in pixel-perfect screens. They cared about the thinking behind the screens.
Design exercise: Two-hour async take-home before the onsite. They gave me a prompt around redesigning part of the wallet onboarding flow with specific constraints. I focused on progressive disclosure. Crypto has a steep learning curve and most people don't want or need to understand it all at once. I designed a flow that defers advanced concepts until the user signals readiness. That angle resonated.
Onsite rounds: After portfolio presentation, I had three conversations: one with the hiring manager (more strategic, vision-level), one with an IC designer (craft-focused), one cross-functional (PM and an engineer in the room). The PM round was essentially: can you make decisions when there's no perfect answer and the engineer is saying the timeline is impossible.
What I'd tell someone prepping: know the product deeply. Use the Coinbase app. Find flows that feel hard and think about why. That's the material. Bring that perspective into every round.
Offer was around the $185-200k total cash range for staff level in NYC.