Lead Software Engineer, Applied AI Initiatives

Block is one company built from many blocks, all united by the same purpose of economic empowerment. The blocks that form our foundational teams - People, Finance, Counsel, Hardware, Information Security, Platform Infrastructure Engineering, and more - provide support and guidance at the corporate level. They work across business groups and around the globe, spanning time zones and disciplines to develop inclusive People policies, forecast finances, give legal counsel, safeguard systems, nurture new initiatives, and more. Every challenge creates possibilities, and we need different perspectives to see them all. Bring yours to Block.
We are looking for lead level Engineers to join our newly formed AI Tools team in the office of the CTO (OCTO) Developer Experience. The AI Tools team is a global team whose role is to accelerate availability of emerging and future technologies and solutions for Blocks engineers.
Within Developer Experience we are passionate about improving engineering velocity and productivity, the AI Tools team in particular will apply innovative techniques to lift engineering velocity and create reusable tools that will be integrated across all aspects of software development lifecycle.
Ideally you will come from a product engineering background and have prior experience delivering products from experiment all the way through to adoption. This role requires curiosity, passion for AI and ability to keep pace with the ever changing AI landscape.
You will

• Reporting into Engineering Manager for Applied AI, you will work closely with a team of senior engineers to build and integrate AI powered tools into every day engineering tasks.
• You will be responsible for boosting developer productivity and engineering excellence by embedding AI into every aspect of the developer lifecycle, reducing toil and streamlining best practices.
• Build AI (Artificial Intelligence) solutions grounded in consistent architectures that have proven repeatability with customers.
• Excel in working in ambiguous environments
• Improve developer productivity and engineering velocity by delivering AI assisted solutions to automate complex processes
• Partner closely with the internal MLE , Product and design counterparts to build AI powered solutions that have an immediate impact on our internal customers.
• Lead complex projects where you take full ownership of the end to end ideation, design, build and maintenance
• Proactively identify opportunities for improvement and implement it
• Design and build scalable, reliable, and maintainable systems
• Build and maintain great relationships with stakeholders in and outside the core team

You have

• 3+ years experience leading projects
• 6+ years of experience designing and shipping scalable, reliable and maintainable systems
• Experience leading complex and ambiguous problems that require collaboration across engineering team boundaries
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to simplify complex issues.
• Experience serving as a technical lead, mentoring other engineers
• Experience working in a customer-focused environment
• Passion for engineering excellence by making high quality, impactful technical contributions
• Excellent communication skills and a demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with partners across Product, Design, Data Science, Operations among other functions
• Ability to work across multiple technical domains, including microservices, lambdas, GenAI and CLIs.
• Ability to rapidly learn new technologies, stand up application infrastructure and services required.
• Entrepreneurial mindset, with demonstrated experience working in an experimental, startup like environment.
• Take a customer first approach to problem solving. In Developer Experience, our customers are internal developers.

Technologies we use and teach:

• Kotlin, Java
• HTTP, JSON, gRPC, and Protocol Buffers
• MySQL and noSQL databases
• Event-driven architecture
• AWS

Block, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) is a global technology company with a focus on financial services. Made up of Square, Cash App, Spiral, TIDAL, and TBD, we build tools to help more people access the economy. Square helps sellers run and grow their businesses with its integrated ecosystem of commerce solutions, business software, and banking services. With Cash App, anyone can easily send, spend, or invest their money in stocks or Bitcoin. Spiral (formerly Square Crypto) builds and funds free, open-source Bitcoin projects. Artists use TIDAL to help them succeed as entrepreneurs and connect more deeply with fans. TBD is building an open developer platform to make it easier to access Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies without having to go through an institution.