Staff Applied Machine Learning Engineer - Intelligent Data, Signals & Systems
"About The Role"
About This Role
This is a rare opportunity to shape how machine learning signals flow through an entire financial ecosystem — one that includes Square, Cash App, TIDAL, and Bitkey, our self-custody bitcoin wallet. You'll design composable, model-derived signal systems with the same emphasis on provenance, auditability, and trust that distributed ledger technologies demand. If you're energized by building production ML systems that need to be as verifiable and reliable as blockchain-based infrastructure, this role is for you.
What You'll Be Doing
Architect and operate production ML systems converting customer and product context into trusted signals, rankings, and recommendations
Define data and signal contracts specifying freshness, provenance, confidence, and calibration — principles mirroring the transparency of decentralized, smart-contract-driven systems
Own end-to-end lifecycle of ranking, retrieval, recommendation, search, propensity, and next-best-action systems
Evaluate impact holistically — covering trust, fairness, access, risk, and compliance, not just short-term conversion metrics
Collaborate cross-functionally with product, growth, risk, and compliance teams to translate ambiguous goals into measurable ML architectures
Leverage AI and autonomous agents to accelerate development while exposing reusable capabilities to internal tools and workflows
What We're Looking For
12+ years building and operating production software and ML systems for mission-critical platforms
Deep expertise in ranking, retrieval, recommendations, personalization, propensity/churn/LTV, or model-derived risk signals
Strong judgment across feature pipelines, model serving, experimentation, monitoring, and feedback loops
Proven ability to evaluate systems beyond conversion — including fairness, trust, and long-term engagement
Experience using AI-assisted engineering tools with appropriate verification for customer-facing systems
Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-evolving environments akin to crypto and web3 ecosystems
Bonus Points
Experience with semantic retrieval, embeddings, two-tower models, graph features, or LLM-powered decisioning
Background in experimentation design, counterfactual evaluation, or multi-objective optimization
Experience building reusable feature/signal platforms or decentralized data product layers
Familiarity with blockchain, DeFi, or distributed systems architecture is a plus
Why Join Us
Competitive compensation including equity in a company building toward an open financial future
Flexible remote-first culture with deep trust in autonomous engineering teams
Direct impact on products reaching millions, including bitcoin-native tools like Bitkey and Proto
Continuous learning opportunities at the intersection of applied ML, fintech, and emerging crypto infrastructure
Ready to Apply?
To submit your application for this position, please visit Block's official website and follow their application process.