Senior Software Engineer (Backend Infrastructure) - Block

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. Every challenge creates possibilities, and we need different perspectives to see them all. Bring yours to Block.

Bitkey sits within the Proto team. Proto's purpose is to accelerate the world’s transition to a more open economy by making products that increase access and independence for everyone. The first two initiatives we’ve identified that represent the biggest impact to this purpose are in the Bitcoin space with Bitcoin mining and Bitkey, a self custody Bitcoin wallet. While we’re starting there, we don’t believe the need for tools to increase one’s independence is limited to bitcoin or the financial space. One principle across everything we do in Proto is open development – show and tell. We develop products in the open, you can read more about them at bitkey.build and mining.build.

Building an entire product from scratch required hiring a team of senior engineers who could navigate the early days of defining the product requirements while also having an experience across a myriad of domains. These include important foundational items such as infrastructure and DevOps as these are essential to helping establish early architecture in a greenfield project. 

Now that we’ve shipped the first version of our product, the team would like to have a deeper and dedicated focus on this work so that we can improve the overall experience for a growing team of engineers, and help them focus on building the product instead of fighting fires constantly. This person will sit closely with our product teams as their primary customer to help define the roadmap for our ongoing infrastructure. This role requires heavy collaboration with all of our disciplines including mobile, server, web, firmware, and security and will be critical to improving the success of our engineers and overall product.

You Will:

• Build out and maintain a continuous delivery pipeline for Bitkey applications, including the deployment and promotion story for ECS and Lambdas

• Help secure our infrastructure that handles the customer key we custody and work with the security lead to drive continued security enhancements on our platform for internal and external customers

• Manage node infrastructure that communicates with the blockchain and allows customers to move funds

• Maintain a high quality bar for our overall infrastructure by ensuring we have the right visibility into tracing, metrics, logging, and alerting

• Iterate on our staging and production infrastructure deployment story

• Continue evolving our testing infrastructure in different environments from hardware to mobile to server side for both our own services and the bitcoin network.

• Work with Block foundational and security teams to leverage foundational tooling and coordinate cross-BU infrastructure work

You Have:

• 8+ years of experience with a significant focus on backend services

• Worked with various teams to develop software approaches and aligned partner teams to advance the work

• Navigated architectural decisions that weigh trade-offs between building your own solution or buying something that suits your needs

• Identified bottlenecks in systems, quantified their impact, and prioritized effectively 

• Bonus: Experience managing infrastructure that spans hardware, mobile, and backend services

• Bonus: Experience building in a zero-to-one environment where you’ve had to trailblaze your own path

Technologies we use and teach:

• Terraform

• Atlantis

• AWS

• Rust

• Docker

• DataDog

• DynamoDB

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.

Zone A: USD $180,000 - USD $270,000
Zone B: USD $171,000 - USD $256,600
Zone C: USD $162,000 - USD $243,000
Zone D: USD $153,000 - USD $229,600

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. 

Full-time employee benefits include the following:

• Healthcare coverage (Medical, Vision and Dental insurance)
• Health Savings Account and Flexible Spending Account
• Retirement Plans including company match 
• Employee Stock Purchase Program
• Wellness programs, including access to mental health, 1:1 financial planners, and a monthly wellness allowance 
• Paid parental and caregiving leave
• Paid time off (including 12 paid holidays)
• Paid sick leave (1 hour per 26 hours worked (max 80 hours per calendar year to the extent legally permissible) for non-exempt employees and covered by our Flexible Time Off policy for exempt employees) 
• Learning and Development resources
• Paid Life insurance, AD&D, and disability benefits 

These benefits are further detailed in Block's policies. This role is also eligible to participate in Block's equity plan subject to the terms of the applicable plans and policies, and may be eligible for a sign-on bonus. Sales roles may be eligible to participate in a commission plan subject to the terms of the applicable plans and policies. Pay and benefits are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefit plans.

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 a proud equal opportunity employer. We work hard to evaluate all employees and job applicants consistently, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, pregnancy, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class. 

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.

Additionally, we consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

We’ve noticed a rise in recruiting impersonations across the industry, where individuals are sending fake job offer emails. Contact from any of our recruiters or employees will always come from an email address ending with @block.xyz, @squareup.com, @tidal.com, or @afterpay.com, @clearpay.co.uk.

Block, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) is a global technology company with a focus on financial services. Made up of Square, Cash App, Spiral, TIDAL, and TBD, 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.

While there is no specific deadline to apply for this role, on average, U.S. open roles are posted for 70 days before being filled by a successful candidate.