# Staff Software Engineer, Financial Platform - Issuing

**Company:** [Square](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/square)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $264k – $395k/yr
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Card Networks, Visa, Iso 8583, Authorization, Clearing And Settlement, Stand-In Processing, Network Certification, Payment Systems, Financial Systems, Distributed Systems, Production Operations, Ai-Assisted Engineering
**Posted:** 2026-09-10

> Staff software engineer leading hands-on development and technical direction for a global card-issuing platform. The role requires deep card-network expertise, direct connectivity and certification experience, and strong software engineering experience in highly reliable payments systems.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Serve as a technical expert on global card networks, interpreting network specifications, message flows, certification requirements, mandates, and production behavior.
- Work directly with card networks to influence requirements, resolve ambiguity, and secure outcomes for Block.
- Lead complex, ambiguous engineering problems spanning multiple teams, systems, and domains.
- Partner with technical leads, program owners, and senior stakeholders to shape solutions at the intersection of network requirements and the issuing platform.
- Write production code, build certification and conformance tooling, analyze network messages, review designs and code, and debug protocol- and field-level issues.
- Drive network certification and mandatory release cycles end to end, translating requirements into pragmatic engineering decisions.
- Establish shared frameworks, standards, tooling, and practices that enable teams to operate independently.
- Mentor engineers through design guidance, code reviews, documentation, and technical judgment.
- Apply AI-assisted tools throughout the engineering lifecycle.
- Participate in on-call rotation, incident response, and reliability improvements for critical financial systems.

## Requirements
- Deep, current expertise with at least one major card network, ideally Visa.
- Experience with direct network connectivity, ISO 8583, authorization and clearing flows, stand-in processing, specifications, certification, and mandate cycles.
- Experience personally building, certifying, or operating a live direct network connection rather than integrating only through a processor.
- Experience working directly with card networks on rulings, exceptions, extensions, configuration changes, defect fixes, or certification outcomes.
- Strong hands-on software engineering experience building and operating highly reliable financial or payments systems at scale.
- Experience leading technically complex, ambiguous work across team boundaries and influencing technical direction.
- Experience creating frameworks, standards, tooling, architecture, or practices adopted by other engineers and teams.
- Broad understanding of the card lifecycle, including issuance and fulfillment, provisioning and activation, authorization, ledgering, clearing and settlement, reconciliation, disputes, or fraud.
- Working knowledge of Mastercard and American Express.
- Fluency with AI-assisted engineering workflows and ability to evaluate AI-generated output.
- Willingness to participate in on-call rotation.

## Compensation
- Annual base salary: **$263,600–$395,400 USD**.

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