Staff Software Engineer, Financial Platform - Issuing
Block
- Location
- Seattle, WA, United States of America
- Work model
- On-Site
- Level
- Staff
- Salary
- $263.6k/yr
- H-1B history
- 120 approvals (FY2023)
- Posted
- 2h ago
About this role
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
At Block, we strive to build the best financial products in the world. The Financial Platform Issuing team owns the card issuing platform that serves every Block brand — powering Cash App Card, the fourth-largest debit card program in the US, alongside Square Card and the new card programs Block launches next.
We run the full lifecycle of a card: issuance, fulfillment, and activation; real-time transaction authorization and processing across card networks; digital wallet provisioning; 3-D Secure authentication; clearing and settlement; and disputes. When a customer taps their card at a register, our systems decide the outcome in milliseconds, around the clock, in partnership with card networks and bank partners.
As a Staff Software Engineer on the Issuing server engineering team, you will bring deep card-network expertise to some of the most complex technical work on our roadmap. You will work alongside technical leads and cross functional teams, going deep where our platform meets the networks: specifications, protocols, certification, mandates, conformance, and production behavior.
This is a hands-on role. You will build systems and tooling, debug at the message level, and turn your network expertise into durable capabilities that other engineers can use. You will also work directly with the networks themselves — not only understanding what they require, but knowing where and how to influence outcomes for Block.
You Will
• Be a deep technical expert on global card networks, helping Issuing teams interpret network specifications, message flows, certification requirements, mandates, and production behavior — and working directly with the networks to influence requirements, resolve ambiguity, and secure outcomes that matter for Block.
• Lead complex, ambiguous engineering problems at the network boundary that span multiple teams, systems, or domains.
• Partner with technical leads, program DRIs, and senior stakeholders to shape solutions where card-network requirements intersect with Block's issuing platform.
• Stay deeply hands-on: write production code, build certification and conformance tooling, analyze network messages, review designs and code, and debug issues down to the protocol and field level.
• Drive network certification and mandatory release cycles end to end, and translate network requirements into clear, pragmatic engineering decisions.
• Establish shared frameworks, standards, tooling, and practices that make network expertise durable and enable teams to operate independently.
• Raise the technical capability of engineers around you through design guidance, code reviews, mentorship, documentation, and clear technical judgment.
• Apply AI-powered tools throughout the engineering lifecycle to improve velocity and quality, and help establish effective patterns for broader team use.
• Share operational ownership of critical financial systems through