Software Engineer, Financial Platform - Issuing
Block is hiring a Software Engineer, Financial Platform - Issuing for a remote role open to applicants in Australia. Level rates it ; you can apply on Block.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
- The posting lists this role as remote.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Claude, Java and Microservices.
- Level classifies it as a mid-level role.
- Level lists 207 other open roles at Block.
AI in this role
Design, build, and operate server-side services powering global financial card issuance and transaction processing.
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 largest card program of all, alongside Square Card and the new 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 and the disputes systems. 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 software engineer on the Issuing server engineering team, you will design, build, and operate the services that power these card experiences, through close collaboration with your team and partner disciplines. You'll own well-scoped features end to end — from design through testing, launch, and operation — and grow your scope as you go. The things you build will run at a massive scale and directly shape how millions of customers across Block spend their money every day.
As a member of the team, you'll:
- Partner closely with your team to design, develop, test, ship, and maintain features across card issuance, transaction processing, and disputes
- Write high-quality, well-tested code, and participate actively in design reviews and code reviews
- Design and implement systems that work within our microservice and event-driven architectures, with the reliability and correctness that moving money demands
- Participate in operational ownership of tier-0 financial systems, including on-call, incident response, and postmortems
- Demonstrate AI fluency by leveraging AI-powered tools throughout the development lifecycle to improve velocity and quality, while applying sound judgment in their use
- Hold your teammates — and yourself — to high engineering standards
- Learn from and support other engineers through code reviews and technical discussions
You Have
- 3+ years of software development or equivalent experience
- Experience building and maintaining production software systems, and delivering well-scoped projects or features end-to-end (design, build, test, ship, operate) with guidance from more experienced engineers
- Drive to find flaws in a system with many moving parts and take whatever steps are necessary to fix them
- A growth mindset and an appetite for solving open-ended and ambiguous problems
- Demonstrated AI fluency, including experience using AI-powered developer tools and the ability to critically evaluate and responsibly apply their outputs
- Strong communication and collaboration skills
- Bachelor's Degree or Diploma in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience
Technologies We Use and Teach
- Java, Kotlin
- AWS
- HTTP, JSON, gRPC, Protocol Buffers
- Hibernate, Aurora, MySQL, DynamoDB, Redis
- Kafka, event-driven architecture, microservices
- Datadog
- Buildkite, Gradle
- AI agents and tooling (Goose, Claude, MCP
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 will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and “fair chance” ordinances.
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.
While there is no specific deadline to apply for this role, U.S. roles are typically open for an average of 55 days before being filled by a successful candidate. Please refer to the date listed at the top of this job page for when this role was first posted.
Application Guidelines
Candidates may submit up to 9 active applications within a 60-day period. Reapplications to the same role are accepted 90 days after a previous application has been reviewed.
Use of AI in Our Hiring Process
We may use automated AI tools to evaluate job applications for efficiency and consistency. These tools comply with local regulations, including bias audits, and we handle all personal data in accordance with state and local privacy laws.
Contact us here with hiring practice or data usage questions.
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 offering. Check out our other benefits at Block.
Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ) builds technology to increase access to the global economy. Each of our brands unlocks different aspects of the economy for more people. Square makes commerce and financial services accessible to sellers. Cash App is the easy way to spend, send, and store money. Afterpay is transforming the way customers manage their spending over time. TIDAL is a music platform that empowers artists to thrive as entrepreneurs. Bitkey is a simple self-custody wallet built for bitcoin. Proto is a suite of bitcoin mining products and services. Together, we’re helping build a financial system that is open to everyone.
How we rate this
Software Engineer, Financial Platform - Issuing at Block rates 0 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical software engineer figure when pay comes up. See software engineer jobs
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- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Tell me about a project where software engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
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- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where card issuing was part of your work. What did you do?
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- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Software Engineering, Backend, Distributed Systems, and Card Issuing. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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