Staff Software Engineer, Catalog Foundations

Since we opened our doors in 2009, the world of commerce has evolved immensely, and so has Square. After enabling anyone to take payments and never miss a sale, we saw sellers stymied by disparate, outmoded products and tools that wouldn’t work together.

So we expanded into software and started building integrated, omnichannel solutions – to help sellers sell online, manage inventory, offer buy now, pay later functionality, book appointments, engage loyal buyers, and hire and pay staff. Across it all, we’ve embedded financial services tools at the point of sale, so merchants can access a business loan and manage their cash flow in one place. Afterpay furthers our goal to provide omnichannel tools that unlock meaningful value and growth, enabling sellers to capture the next generation shopper, increase order sizes, and compete at a larger scale.

Today, we are a partner to sellers of all sizes – large, enterprise-scale businesses with complex operations, sellers just starting, as well as merchants who began selling with Square and have grown larger over time. As our sellers grow, so do our solutions. There is a massive opportunity in front of us. We’re building a significant, meaningful, and lasting business, and we are helping sellers worldwide do the same.

The Role

The Catalog Foundations team owns the core services that allow Square sellers to seamlessly and reliably manage their catalogs. We ensure the platform is reliable, performant and scalable, and we empower internal teams and sellers with superior service and extensibility. We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to collaborate closely with the other back-end engineers to maintain reliability and performance of our service. We are seeking engineers who will contribute to setting our technical direction and champion best practices. Engineers on our team are expected to make thoughtful, outcome-based and data-driven investments in foundational improvements to accelerate dependent teams.

You Will

• Help design, build, and maintain Square’s catalog system


• Collaborate cross-team on projects


• Deliver APIs that make it easy for developers to interact with catalog data


• Identify risks and devise solutions to performance and scalability challenges as our catalog and seller data continues to evolve and grow


• Build for the future by clearly communicating the cost-benefit of a given solution and advocating for the best path forward


• Hold your teammates and yourself to a high standard of engineering that is foundational to products that have a huge impact on sellers day to day operations.


• Mentor other engineers, helping them develop both technical and soft skills to navigate alignment challenges, manage complexity, and drive impact across teams

You Have

• 12+ years of software development experience


• Strong familiarity with Go


• An advanced degree in computer science or equivalent experience


• Experience in designing and productionizing large-scale distributed systems


• Willingness to learn, grow, and give and receive feedback


• Ability to find and solve problems with a high degree of ambiguity


• Excellent skills with data modeling and data management


• Experience with complete development cycle from product definition to delivery

Even Better:

• Experience building a unified catalog experience within a marketplace-based business


• Experience supporting internal and external developers at large and complex organizations

Technologies We Use and Teach

• Golang


• MySQL, DynamoDB, OpenSearch, Redis


• Protocol Buffers, gRPC, Kafka, Terraform, Kubernetes, Temporal IO, Envoy


• AWS and other cloud platform

At Block, our purpose is to empower – within and outside of our walls. In order to build the best tools for the businesses and customers we support all over the world, we have to start at home with a workforce as diverse and empowered as our sellers. To this end, we take great care to evaluate all employees and job applicants equally, based on merit, competence, and qualifications. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, social or health conditions, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply. Applicants in need of special assistance or accommodation during the interview process or in accessing our website may contact us by sending an email to assistance(at)squareup.com.