Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Underwriting

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 and happy.
The Role
The Underwriting, Fraud, and Credit MLE organization is on a mission to redefine credit and liquidity through simple, fair, and accessible credit solutions that build financial health and resilience. We are responsible for all credit decisions where Block advances funds or provides liquidity to consumers through Cash App and Afterpay. Our team builds the engineering systems and integrates ML solutions for evaluating customer cash flow risk - including risk of default on credit obligations, fraud & abuse of loans, and other scenarios where funds are advanced. Our products serve tens of millions of active customers monthly through offerings such as Cash App Borrow, Cash App Overdraft Protection, Afterpay on Cash Card, and Afterpay Buy Now Pay Later, and we are looking to rapidly expand to the 45 million consumers in the US who don't have access to traditional credit products. You can learn more about our work in the Q3 2024 Shareholder Letter.
This staff-level role offers a unique opportunity for organization-wide impact across multiple teams and dozens of engineers as we unify our platforms, incorporate generative AI into our workflows and further scale our products. The ideal candidate will have a strong software development background with experience in large-scale migrations or monolith decompositions, coupled with a focus on simplification and overcoming obstacles to ship software. They will be familiar with ML infrastructure such as feature stores, decision engines, and workflow orchestration tools to help inform and guide our long-term architectural evolution. They have an up-to-date understanding of GenAI tools and capabilities and can help develop the organization into being highly productive, cohesive and impactful. This is an exciting opportunity to make a tangible impact on our product and work on projects that are critical to the business's success. You'll be reporting to the head of the organization and working on a distributed team with members in the USA, Canada, and Australia.
You Will

• Shape the Technical Vision & Contribute Hands-On: Provide overall architectural and technical direction across our credit and underwriting platform, while still diving into the code to solve complex problems and lead by example.
• Champion Engineering Excellence: Elevate reliability, correctness, testing, and maintainability standards, ensuring our systems are robust, secure, and future-proof.
• Mentor and Grow Teams: Coach engineers of varying experience levels, fostering continuous learning and adopting emerging practices - particularly generative AI coding tools - to boost productivity and innovation.
• Scale and Refine Systems: Develop and evolve our distributed infrastructure to handle growing customer demands across multiple large-scale credit products.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner closely with product managers, data scientists, ML modelers, and other stakeholders to align on goals, deliver impactful features, and continuously improve our engineering systems.

You Have

• 10+ years of backend software development experience in building and maintaining applications, including 3+ years of experience leading large scale features - planning, managing and executing on the delivery projects in a timely manner while maintaining a high quality bar.
• 3+ years of experience with ML Infrastructure such as data pipelines, feature development, decisioning, etc.
• Drive and experience in identifying, aligning and landing globally optimal solutions in a system with many moving parts
• Possess a strong ownership and execution mindset and experience working with cross-functional teams that are globally distributed
• A strong track record in helping other engineers grow
• Passion about continuously learning new technologies, frameworks, and services, with a particular focus on generative AI.
• A keen interest in advancing Cash App's vision of building for economic empowerment

Technologies We Use and Teach

• Kotlin, Java, Python
• Onnx/PyTorch, LightGBM/XGBoost
• Kubernetes, AWS, DataDog, Kafka
• Hibernate, MySQL, Cassandra DB, DynamoDB
• HTTP, JSON, gRPC, Protocol Buffers

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.