Senior Staff Software Engineer, Access

It all started with an idea at Block in 2013. Initially built to take the pain out of peer-to-peer payments, Cash App has gone from a simple product with a single purpose to a dynamic ecosystem, developing unique financial products, including Afterpay/Clearpay, to provide a better way to send, spend, invest, borrow and save to our 50+ million monthly active customers. We want to redefine the world's relationship with money to make it more relatable, instantly available, and universally accessible.
Today, Cash App has thousands of employees working globally across office and remote locations, with a culture geared toward innovation, collaboration and impact. We've been a distributed team since day one, and many of our roles can be done remotely from the countries where Cash App operates. No matter the location, we tailor our experience to ensure our employees are creative, productive, and happy.
The Role
Access is the cornerstone of Cash App, responsible for managing authentication, sessions, authorization, and protecting against account takeover and inauthentic logins. Our mission is to maximize trust and expand access to our ecosystem, ensuring that every user feels safe and secure on our platform. We aim to build a reliable technical foundation and intuitive customer-facing features that enable authentic customers to consistently access their accounts while safeguarding them from unauthorized access and inauthentic actors.
As a Senior Staff Engineer on the Access team, you will be a key technical leader driving the team's vision, roadmap, and technical architectures. You will work closely with product managers, designers, and engineering leaders to create impactful products that fundamentally change how customers access their money.
Key Responsibilities

• Architect and Operate: Design, build, and operate the APIs and services that power Cash App's authentication flows, ensuring they are robust and scalable.
• Enhance Security: Contribute to the safety of our customers by ensuring meaningful control over account security, protecting against unauthorized access.
• Evolve Architecture: Lead efforts to evolve our architecture to scale with growth, working across large monolithic codebases and microservices.
• Collaborate Cross Functionally: Partner with product, design, engineering, operations, and business leads to evolve the team's vision and roadmap by thoroughly understanding customer needs.
• Lead Technical Discussions: Participate in critical technical, design, and product discussions with leaders across the organization, providing technical leadership and insights.
• Maintain High Standards: Hold yourself and your teammates to high engineering standards, fostering pragmatic engineering decision-making and leveraging your technical expertise to raise the bar.
• System Reliability: Participate in live support rotations to ensure our systems run smoothly and efficiently.

You Have

• Extensive Experience: 12+ years of experience building and operating quality software, with a strong track record of technical initiative and leadership on previous projects.
• Growth Mindset: A healthy comfort with ambiguity and a strong desire to learn and grow.
• Communication and Empathy: Strong communication skills and customer empathy, with the ability to understand and address customer needs.
• Mentorship: Experience in contributing to the growth of development capabilities through leading, mentoring, and supporting fellow engineers.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Product Security and AuthN/AuthZ: Experience with or interest in product security and authentication/authorization standards.
• Large Codebases: Experience working in large codebases and breaking apart monoliths.
• Distributed Teams: Experience working in a distributed team environment.

Technologies We Use and Teach

• Java, Kotlin, Golang
• HTTP, JSON, gRPC, Protocol Buffers
• MySQL, Hibernate, DynamoDB
• Kafka and event-driven architecture
• DataDog, Prometheus
• AWS, Kubernetes

We're working to build a more inclusive economy where our customers have equal access to opportunity, and we strive to live by these same values in building our workplace. Block is an equal opportunity employer evaluating all employees and job applicants without regard to identity or any legally protected class. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, and always assess candidates on an individualized basis.
We believe in being fair, and are committed to an inclusive interview experience, including providing reasonable accommodations to disabled applicants throughout the recruitment process. We encourage applicants to share any needed accommodations with their recruiter, who will treat these requests as confidentially as possible. Want to learn more about what we're doing to build a workplace that is fair and square? Check out our I+D page .
Block will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and "fair chance" ordinances.
Block takes a market-based approach to pay, and pay may vary depending on your location. U.S locations are categorized into one of four zones based on a cost of labor index for that geographic area. The successful candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future.
To find a location's zone designation, please refer to this resource . If a location of interest is not listed, please speak with a recruiter for additional information.
Zone A:
$239,600 - $359,400 USD
Zone B:
$239,600 - $359,400 USD
Zone C:
$239,600 - $359,400 USD
Zone D:
$239,600 - $359,400 USD
Every benefit we offer is designed with one goal: empowering you to do the best work of your career while building the life you want. Check out benefits at Block.
Block, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) is a global technology company with a focus on financial services. Made up of Square, Cash App, Spiral, and TIDAL, 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.