Staff Software Engineer – Financial Platform

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Australia.

📋 Description

• Act as a technical authority on global card networks, assisting Issuing teams in understanding specifications, message flows, certification requirements, mandates, and operational behaviors.

• Collaborate directly with card networks to shape requirements, clarify uncertainties, and achieve favorable outcomes for Block.

• Tackle intricate and ambiguous engineering challenges that span across multiple teams, systems, or domains.

• Work alongside technical leads, program DRIs, and senior stakeholders to develop solutions where network requirements align with Block’s issuing platform.

• Write production-level code, create certification and conformance tools, analyze network messages, review designs and code, and debug at both the protocol and field levels.

• Oversee network certification and mandatory release cycles from start to finish.

• Create shared frameworks, standards, tools, and methodologies.

• Offer design guidance, conduct code reviews, provide mentorship, generate documentation, and exercise technical judgment.

• Utilize AI-powered tools throughout the engineering lifecycle and establish effective practices for broader team adoption.

• Engage in on-call duties, incident response, and ongoing reliability and correctness enhancements for critical financial systems.

⛳️ Requirements

• A minimum of 12 years of relevant experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 8 years with a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 5 years of experience; or equivalent qualifications.

• Profound, up-to-date knowledge of at least one major card network, preferably Visa, including direct connectivity, ISO 8583, authorization and clearing flows, stand-in processing, specifications, certification, and mandate cycles.

• Experience in building, certifying, or managing a live direct network connection, rather than merely integrating through a processor.

• Proven track record of working directly with card networks to secure rulings, exceptions, extensions, configuration changes, defect resolutions, or certification results.

• Strong practical experience in software engineering, specifically in building and maintaining highly reliable financial or payment systems at scale.

• History of leading technically challenging and ambiguous efforts across team boundaries and influencing technical direction beyond immediate responsibilities.

• Experience in creating frameworks, standards, tools, architecture, or practices that have been adopted by other engineers and teams.

• Comprehensive understanding of the card lifecycle, including issuance and fulfillment, provisioning and activation, authorization, ledgering, clearing and settlement, reconciliation, disputes, or fraud.

• Familiarity with Mastercard and American Express.

• Proficiency in AI-assisted engineering workflows and sound judgment in assessing and applying AI-generated outputs.

• Openness to participating in an on-call rotation for critical financial systems.

🏝️ Benefits

• Remote work

• Medical insurance

• Flexible time off

• Retirement savings plans

• Modern family planning

• Inclusive interview process, with reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities