Senior Software Engineer, Data Enablement

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.

About the role

The Data Enablement team builds the platforms and frameworks that move and serve data across Block. We support four core capabilities — online and offline data projections, a third-party data proxy, and graph data stores — for customers across the company, including Risk, Compliance, Data Engineering, and Data Science. As a Staff Software Engineer on the team, you will become the subject-matter expert and a significant contributor to our online data projections and event-streaming capabilities — designing the platform, frameworks, and standards that turn Block's event streams into low-latency, production-grade data products. Your work sets the technical direction for how teams across the company build on streaming data.

Responsibilities

• Become the subject-matter expert for Block's online data projections and event-streaming capabilities — designing the platform, frameworks, and standards others build on
• Lead the technical direction for real-time, event-driven data systems used by business units across Block
• Build and operate streaming pipelines and projection frameworks on high-volume event data
• Partner with engineering teams across Block to turn Kafka event streams into reliable, low-latency data products
• Improve the reliability, observability, and data quality of streaming systems running in production
• Mentor engineers on the team and shape platform architecture and standards
• Contribute to and grow familiar with the team's other domains over time — supporting our third-party data proxy backend applications, graph data store capabilities, and offline batch data projections

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience (or Block equivalent, as referenced in go/levels)
• Deep experience designing and operating distributed, high-throughput backend systems in production
• Hands-on experience with event-driven architecture and streaming platforms such as Kafka
• Experience building streaming or real-time data systems; hands-on experience with Spark Structured Streaming or Flink is strongly preferred
• Proficiency in a JVM language such as Kotlin, or a comparable backend or systems programming background
• Experience building on cloud infrastructure, ideally AWS
• A track record of leading technical projects and mentoring other engineers

Nice to have

• Bonus points for a data engineering background (building data pipelines, lakehouse or warehouse modeling, or large-scale batch and streaming systems)

Technologies We Use and Teach

• Kafka, Spark, Spark Structured Streaming, Iceberg, Databricks, Snowflake, dbt, Prefect, block-forge, DataHub, Kotlin, AWS, CloudEvents

Pay

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.

• Zone A: $217,800 USD - $326,800 USD
• Zone B: $207,000 USD - $310,400 USD
• Zone C: $196,100 USD - $294,100 USD
• Zone D: $185,200 USD - $277,800 USD

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.

Benefits

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. Remote work, medical insurance, flexible time off, retirement savings plans, and modern family planning are just some of our offerings. Check out our other benefits at Block.