Block
PrincipalEngineer,AISystems
Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Senior candidates.
“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.
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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