Senior Machine Learning Manager, Square Financial Services

Since we opened our doors in 2009, the world of commerce has evolved immensely, and so has Square. After enabling anyone to take payments and never miss a sale, we saw sellers stymied by disparate, outmoded products and tools that wouldn't work together.

So we expanded into software and started building integrated, omnichannel solutions – to help sellers sell online, manage inventory, offer buy now, pay later functionality, book appointments, engage loyal buyers, and hire and pay staff. Across it all, we've embedded financial services tools at the point of sale, so merchants can access a business loan and manage their cash flow in one place. Afterpay furthers our goal to provide omnichannel tools that unlock meaningful value and growth, enabling sellers to capture the next generation shopper, increase order sizes, and compete at a larger scale.

Today, we are a partner to sellers of all sizes – large, enterprise-scale businesses with complex operations, sellers just starting, as well as merchants who began selling with Square and have grown larger over time. As our sellers grow, so do our solutions. There is a massive opportunity in front of us. We're building a significant, meaningful, and lasting business, and we are helping sellers worldwide do the same.

The Role

We are looking for an enthusiastic and experienced Machine Learning Manager to lead our team building and deploying machine learning models that support our banking and lending business. Square Banking includes some of the fastest growing products that have a material contribution to Block's business. This is a product focused modeling role in which the work has immediate customer and financial impact.

In this role, you'll have the chance to engage with a diverse range of team members including product, data engineering, operations, as well as individuals in investor relations & capital markets. We are looking for “full stack” contributors that can engage across the spectrum from business strategy discussions to statistics and implementation details.

You Will

• Drive the execution and delivery of ML models, ensuring your team has the context and support to build impactful solutions.
• Implement and deploy pragmatic modeling approaches to grow new products, as well as careful application of advanced techniques for mature ones
• Use data science techniques to leverage new data sources for modeling, making sense of messy datasets and bringing clarity to business decisions
• Lead complex ML Operations and Infrastructure initiatives that advance our modeling capabilities (e.g. scaling data ingestion, enabling more complex neural networks, etc)
• Support team members in ad-hoc and scheduled updates to existing models, and help troubleshoot issues in a real-time production environment
• Work closely with product engineers within the product teams and broader Block/Square platform teams
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of machine learning engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and engineering excellence.
• Set the technical vision and strategy for the team, defining the roadmap for developing scalable ML solutions
• Promote the adoption of AI best practices across the company by empowering your team to provide guidance and share their expertise.

You Have

• 12+ years of experience in machine learning or software engineering, with 5+ years in a people management role, leading a team of engineers.
• Experience shipping customer-facing ML products, with a understanding of the end-to-end ML lifecycle from data gathering and training to MLOps and production deployment.
• Extraordinary communication skills (verbal and written), with the ability to articulate a technical strategy to both senior leadership and individual contributors.
• Understanding of modern ML techniques and the ability to guide a team through complex technical decisions.
• Strong leadership and mentoring skills with a passion for developing talent and building inclusive, high-performing teams.
• Experience leading teams to produce production-quality code and services, with a track record of setting high standards for testing, evaluation, and monitoring.
• Experience using any of the major cloud vendors for high-scale production use cases.
• Credit, lending or underwriting related ML experience.

Technologies We Use and Teach

• Python (NumPy, Pandas, sklearn, xgboost, TensorFlow, keras, etc.)
• MySQL, Snowflake, GCP/AWS and Tableau

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 an equal opportunity employer evaluating all employees and job applicants without regard to identity or any legally protected class. We will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and “fair chance” ordinances. 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.