Staff Software Engineer – Financial Platform

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

📋 Description

• Act as a profound technical authority on global card networks, interpreting specifications, message flows, certification requirements, mandates, and production behavior.

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

• Tackle complex and ambiguous engineering challenges at the network boundary across various teams, systems, and domains.

• Work alongside technical leads, program Directly Responsible Individuals (DRIs), and senior stakeholders to develop effective solutions.

• 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 the end-to-end process of network certification and mandatory release cycles.

• Establish common frameworks, standards, tooling, and best practices.

• Offer design guidance, conduct code reviews, provide mentorship, document processes, and exercise technical judgment.

• Leverage AI-powered tools across the engineering lifecycle.

• Engage in on-call duties, incident response, and ongoing improvements to reliability and correctness.

⛳️ Requirements

• Extensive and up-to-date expertise with at least one major card network, preferably Visa.

• Knowledge of 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.

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

• Strong hands-on software engineering background in building and maintaining highly reliable financial or payment systems at scale.

• Experience leading technically intricate and ambiguous projects across team boundaries while influencing technical direction.

• Proven ability to create frameworks, standards, tools, architecture, or practices that are adopted by other engineers and teams.

• Comprehensive understanding of the card lifecycle.

• Familiarity with Mastercard and American Express.

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

• Willingness to participate in an on-call rotation for critical financial systems.

🏝️ Benefits

• Remote work options.

• Medical insurance coverage.

• Flexible time off policies.

• Retirement savings plans.

• Modern family planning assistance.

• Reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process.