Tech Lead, Business Platform Engineering

About the role

Block is one company built from many blocks, all united by the same purpose of economic empowerment. The Tech Lead, Business Platform Engineering will own the architectural vision for Bizplat's platform systems, defining the target state for a consolidated, well-architected service landscape that supports automation across Risk & Compliance, Customer Support, GTM/Sales, Finance, and Hardware Supply Chain. This role drives service consolidation by identifying redundant, overlapping, or underutilized services and leading the technical strategy to turn them down, migrate workloads, and converge onto shared systems. The hire will design and build core platform capabilities - including case management, workflow orchestration, AI/ML pipelines, event streaming, and integration frameworks - that are reusable across domains and teams. They will lead technical planning and execution for high-priority cross-cutting initiatives such as contact center stack convergence, and automation platform maturity. The Tech Lead sets and enforces engineering standards for system design, API contracts, observability, data governance, and operational reliability across Bizplat's engineering teams. This position partners with Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) teams to ensure domain-specific solutions feed back into the platform as reusable capabilities rather than becoming one-off services.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Own the architectural vision for Bizplat's platform systems, defining the target state for a consolidated, well-architected service landscape that supports automation across Risk & Compliance, Customer Support, GTM/Sales, Finance, and Hardware Supply Chain.
• Drive service consolidation by identifying redundant, overlapping, or underutilized services and leading the technical strategy to turn them down, migrate workloads, and converge onto shared systems.
• Design and build core platform capabilities including case management, workflow orchestration, AI/ML pipelines, event streaming, and integration frameworks that are reusable across domains and teams.
• Lead technical planning and execution for high-priority cross-cutting initiatives such as contact center stack convergence, and automation platform maturity.
• Set and enforce engineering standards for system design, API contracts, observability, data governance, and operational reliability across Bizplat's engineering teams.
• Partner with Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) teams to ensure domain-specific solutions feed back into the platform as reusable capabilities rather than becoming one-off services.
• Make hard architectural tradeoffs between speed of delivery, technical debt reduction, reliability, and long-term platform direction, and communicate those tradeoffs clearly to leadership.
• Mentor and elevate engineers across the organization through design reviews, technical guidance, and knowledge sharing that raises the overall quality bar.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across Risk Ops, Customer Ops, Sales Ops, Finance, and Hardware to translate operational needs into scalable technical solutions.
• Use AI as a force multiplier in your engineering workflow and in the systems you design leveraging LLMs, agentic architectures, and automation to accelerate delivery.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and patterns to determine applicability to the automation platform, ensuring solutions are grounded in proven, scalable approaches.
• Facilitate cross-team design discussions to align on shared services, reducing fragmentation and promoting reuse.
• Analyze operational metrics to identify platform gaps, driving improvements in reliability, performance, and developer experience.
• Guide teams on best practices for distributed systems, security, and compliance within the automation platform.
• Support hiring and onboarding of platform engineers by defining clear technical ladders and expectations.
• Represent Bizplat platform interests in cross-functional forums and steering committees to ensure alignment with enterprise standards.
• Drive the execution of platform roadmap milestones, balancing tactical needs with strategic architectural goals.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5 years in a technical leadership or architect role owning systems at scale.
• Deep experience consolidating and simplifying complex service architectures, including successfully reducing service sprawl, migrating workloads across systems, and decommissioning legacy services in production environments.
• Strong systems design and architecture skills, with demonstrable experience building platforms used by multiple teams and business domains.
• Experience building or operating automation, workflow orchestration, or case management systems (e.g., Temporal, Airflow, custom workflow engines, or similar).
• Track record of driving technical strategy across organizational boundaries, aligning multiple teams to a shared platform vision and executing on multi-quarter roadmaps.
• Fluency in at least one modern programming language with the ability to contribute to code reviews and technical designs across the stack.
• Proven ability to translate complex business requirements into scalable, reliable, and secure technical solutions.
• Experience working in regulated environments where governance, auditability, and risk management are critical is required.
• Demonstrated skill in communicating technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, influencing without direct authority.
• Commitment to building inclusive, collaborative teams and mentoring engineers at various levels.
• Willingness to engage in hands-on technical work, including coding, debugging, and design reviews, even as leadership responsibilities grow.
• Understanding of data governance, observability standards, and API contract management is essential.
• Experience with cloud-native patterns and infrastructure is strongly aligned with the role expectations.
• Familiarity with risk, compliance, and operational workflows in financial services or related regulated industries is preferred.

Nice to have

• Experience with AI/ML pipelines and agentic architectures to augment automation platform capabilities.
• Background in hardware supply chain or physical operations technology integration.

Practical notes

• This is a full-time position based in the Bay Area, California, United States.
• Compensation is aligned with company policy and will be considered during the hiring process.
• Only candidates who meet the stated requirements will be contacted for the next steps.
• All hiring processes follow Block's standard employment practices and equal opportunity guidelines.