Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Credit Risk

Company Description

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 47 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.

Check out our locations, benefits, and more at cash.app/careers.

Job Description

The Underwriting & Credit organization’s mission is to redefine credit and liquidity through simple, fair, and accessible credit solutions that build financial health and resilience. The Commerce team at Cash App provides different payment products such as BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later), Pay monthly, Afterpay on Cash Card, etc. The Underwriting and Credit team is responsible for building systems that power credit risk management to all those products. Our services are part of Checkout, Home page and other key flows and are responsible for making lending and eligibility decisions for various products at AfterPay and Cash App.

As a member of the ML systems engineering team, you will work very closely with ML Modelers and Decision Scientists to integrate and productize credit risk models. The Underwriting systems engineering team is the main interface between the world of ML and product engineering, and as such your work will include everything from backend engineering, developing data pipelines, to creating features, and working with rules engines. We build our services over Cash App's ever-evolving infrastructure, and as a senior engineer on the team, you will embrace these changes and scale our tech stack to promote future evolvability. This is an exciting opportunity to make a direct, tangible impact on our product and work on projects that are critical to the business’s success. 
 

You will:

• Be responsible for designing, building and managing the distributed services and pipelines for Underwriting & Credit at Afterpay & Cash App
• Lead impactful, multi-person projects that cross Engineering team boundaries
• Demonstrate high code quality, good test coverage and other engineering best practices 
• Collaborate with product, analysts, and modelers on planning and implementing frictionless user experiences 
• Work cross-functionally with product, platform, security, and data engineering teams to unlock new machine learning applications
• Have autonomy to research and achieve outcomes with support when you need it
• Creatively solve challenging technical problems at scale
• Contribute to the growth of our development capabilities through mentoring and supporting fellow engineers

Qualifications

You have: 

• 8+ years of backend software development experience in building and maintaining applications in any mainstream language such as: Java, Python, Kotlin, Ruby, Go, Swift, C++
• Enthusiasm about solving business problems with technology and proven experience successfully taking ownership of an end-to-end solution
• Passion about continuously learning new technologies, frameworks, and services
• Possess an execution mindset and the ability to deliver with cross-functional teams that are globally distributed
• Serious about testing and have experience with automated testing frameworks
• Experience of ML model-related experience is a bonus
• Experience with common technologies, for example, Kafka, Redis, Cassandra is a bonus
• A keen interest in advancing Cash App's vision of building for economic empowerment

Tools we use and teach:

• Python, Java, Kotlin
• Kubernetes, AWS
• Datadog
• Hibernate, MySQL, Cassandra DB, DynamoDB
• HTTP, JSON, gRPC, Protocol Buffers
• Kafka, event-driven microservice architecture

Additional Information

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 $198,000 - USD $297,000
Zone B: USD $188,100 - USD $282,100
Zone C: USD $178,200 - USD $267,400
Zone D: USD $168,300 - USD $252,500            

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.

Block will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and “fair chance” ordinances. Because the material duties of this role involve direct or indirect access to sensitive personal or financial data, a criminal background check is required following a contingent offer of employment.

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.

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.