Block

PrincipalEngineer,AISystems

$350–650k ~AI est. California, United States Remote Friendly
Market Sentiment
HIGH DEMAND

Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Senior candidates.

The Brief

“Principal Engineer, AI Systems at Block. Skills: AI Systems, Autonomous agents, Agentic workflows, LLMs. Ship autonomous agents. Architect autonomous agents”

What You'll Achieve.

Deliver business value; Ensure reliability; Ensure safety; Ensure performance at scale; Create agent-powered products

Industry & Context.

Problems you'll solve

Root cause analysis; Troubleshooting; Debugging; Analytical skills

What They're Looking For.

Must Have

15+ years software engineering, 15+ years machine learning, Recent production autonomous agents experience, Deep production agent experience, Production software engineering fundamentals, Production-quality code writing, Sound architectural decisions, Technical leadership experience, Shaped technical direction, Driven execution, Elevated others, Product-minded engineering approach, User outcome thinking, Navigating extreme ambiguity

Nice to Have

Experience at leading AI organizations, Translating research into production agents, Scaling agentic products at startups, Model fine-tuning experience, Model distillation experience, RLHF experience, Agent evaluation challenges, Agent safety challenges, Agent alignment challenges

What You'll Do.

Ship autonomous agents

Architect autonomous agents

Build autonomous agents

Own end-to-end delivery

Design agent orchestration systems

Integrate LLMs into agent architectures

Optimize LLMs into agent architectures

Drive model optimization work

Lead technical planning

Break down objectives

Provide technical mentorship

Elevate team capabilities

Partner with stakeholders

Translate business objectives

Evaluate emerging AI capabilities

Make pragmatic tradeoffs

Foster technical excellence

Foster high-quality delivery

Foster rapid experimentation

How You'll Work.

Team & Collaboration

Technical stakeholders; Non-technical stakeholders; Engineering teams; Product teams; Design teams

Communication Scope

Build alignment

Process & Methodology

Technical planning, Sequenced tasks, Clear ownership, Execution paths

Full Job Description

Block builds simple, powerful tools that make progress towards an economy that's truly open to all. Each of our brands unlocks different aspects of the economy for more people. Square makes commerce and financial services accessible to sellers. Cash App is the easy way to spend, send, and store money. Afterpay is transforming the way customers manage their spending over time. TIDAL is a music platform that empowers artists to thrive as entrepreneurs. Bitkey is a simple self-custody wallet built for bitcoin. Proto is a suite of bitcoin mining products and services. Together, we're helping build a financial system that is open to everyone. Join us. The Role Block is building toward one of the most ambitious technical visions in our history: an AGI-enabled entity that fundamentally transforms how we deliver economic empowerment. We're assembling a world-class team of AI experts to design and ship autonomous agents and agentic workflows that operate across Square, Cash App, and the broader Block ecosystem. This work is about creating solutions—you'll be building AI that acts, decides, and completes real tasks for real users from across all of Block's business functions. As a Principal Engineer, you'll join as a senior individual contributor with significant technical leadership responsibilities. You Will Ship, architect, build, and own end-to-end delivery of autonomous agents and agentic workflows that deliver real business value for Block, ensuring reliability, safety, and performance at scale Design agent orchestration systems including planning, tool use, memory, evaluation, and multi-agent coordination at production scale Integrate and optimize frontier LLMs into agent architectures, making decisions on model selection, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and context retrieval strategies Drive deeper model optimization work (fine-tuning, distillation, RLHF) where it unlocks agent capability or efficiency Lead detailed technical planning by breaking down ambitious objec

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