Head of Personalization, Machine Learning

Company Description

It all started with an idea at Block in 2013. Initially built to take the pain out of peer-to-peer payments, Cash App has gone from a simple product with a single purpose to a dynamic ecosystem, developing unique financial products, including Afterpay/Clearpay, to provide a better way to send, spend, invest, borrow and save to our 47 million monthly active customers. We want to redefine the world’s relationship with money to make it more relatable, instantly available, and universally accessible.

Today, Cash App has thousands of employees working globally across office and remote locations, with a culture geared toward innovation, collaboration and impact. We’ve been a distributed team since day one, and many of our roles can be done remotely from the countries where Cash App operates. No matter the location, we tailor our experience to ensure our employees are creative, productive, and happy.

Check out our locations, benefits, and more at cash.app/careers.

Job Description

We are looking for a senior machine learning and AI leader to join and lead Cash App’s Personalization ML organization. This group oversees all personalization ML modeling and engineering work for Cash App & Afterpay, including recommendations, search retrieval/ranking, growth, incentives, cross/up-sell, etc.

You will be a part of Cash App’s Machine Learning & Data Science (MLDS) team and report directly to the head of the organization, who reports to the CEO of Cash App. You will partner closely with our most senior product leaders on how to incorporate machine learning and AI into the development of new features and identify opportunities to leverage AI to personalize and enrich our existing products and features. Our goal is to establish ML/AI as a distinct pillar in product development alongside product management, engineering, and design.
 

You will:

• Grow, lead, and mentor a senior team of ~20-25 machine learning modelers, scientists, and engineers.
• Provide both technical and career guidance for each individual and sub-lead on your team.
• Create a tightly aligned and fruitful partnership between your modeling and engineering sub-teams (e.g. shared roadmapping, prioritization, goals, etc.).
• Partner and collaborate closely with Cash App’s senior-most product and business leaders.
• Work with your team to identify new opportunities, develop prototypes, achieve buy-in from partners, and deliver production-ready ML solutions that have a large impact on the business.
• Effectively communicate your team’s work with senior leadership and the executive team on a regular basis.
• Contribute directly to quarterly and annual strategic plans.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest state-of-the-art techniques in AI (e.g. LLMs and generative AI more broadly) and foster a culture of learning within the organization.
• Help shape Block’s overall ML and AI strategy.

Qualifications

You have:

• 8+ years of machine learning and AI industry experience.
• 5+ years of experience managing teams of machine learning engineers, modelers, and/or data scientists.
• An advanced degree in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Physics, or a related technical field.
• Very strong communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience working cross-functionally to build and ship new products and features that leverage ML in a production environment.
• Deep knowledge of and experience with a wide range of machine learning algorithms and techniques, including many of the recent state-of-the-art developments in generative AI.
• Expertise in understanding how to apply ML and AI to solve/optimize complex problems and drive new/improved customer experiences.
• An appreciation for how to go from zero-to-one for new ML solutions as well as how to optimize mature, scaled ML applications.
• Strong statistical and mathematical intuition with an appreciation for concepts such as causality, selection bias, incrementality, hypothesis testing, etc.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and the ability to manage teams that adhere to engineering best practices.
• Intellectual curiosity and a passion for Block’s purpose of economic empowerment.

Additional Information

Block takes a market-based approach to pay, and pay may vary depending on your location. U.S locations are categorized into one of four zones based on a cost of labor index for that geographic area. The successful candidate’s starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Zone A: USD $300,000.00
Outside Zone A: USD