Design Engineer

We're laying the groundwork for a new era of design intelligence at Block by building foundational infrastructure, adaptive systems, and agent-driven workflows that elevate how teams think, build, and ship. Our mission is to turn design intent into a programmable resource: tools, agents, and capabilities that accelerate exploration, sharpen workflows, and open entirely new creative surfaces. And we're doing it in a way that democratizes craft by making advanced design capability accessible to anyone with an idea, not just those with specialized skills or privileged tools.

We treat AI as a new medium, not a bolt-on. The strongest builders here instinctively integrate it into their process, see where it reshapes workflows, and explore the creative surfaces it unlocks. We value mindset over skillset where curiosity, systems thinking, and people who push past symptoms to uncover the actual problem worth solving. And we thrive with people who collaborate by default, treating shared momentum and joint problem-solving as part of their craft.

This role is for curious builders who thrive on experimentation, adopt emerging technologies early, and aren't afraid to push the boundaries of design × AI in ways that scale across Block and beyond.

You Will

1. Experiment, build, and maintain AI-assisted design and development tooling that empowers makers and amplifies creativity.
2. Encode design intent and brand expression into adaptive, programmable agents.
3. Explore and prototype new interface paradigms. Multimodal, agentic, and generative.
4. Create flexible infrastructures (plugins, automation tools, agent-based workflows) that scale across teams and foster community adoption.
5. Partner with design and engineering leadership to define the future of design × engineering x AI mind melding.

You Have

We don't optimize for resumes, diplomas, or perfect portfolios. We look for people with evidence of capability, curiosity, and momentum. Builders who've pushed themselves even when their environment didn't.

You might show this through:

1. Significant experience shipping software and solving real problems regardless of where or how you learned.
2. Hands-on work in design engineering, design technology, creative tooling, or adjacent hybrid spaces.
3. Strong proficiency in front-end technologies.
4. Experience with AI/ML APIs, LLMs, or agent-based workflows.
5. Familiarity with open-source AI tools, libraries, and frameworks for automation or generative systems.
6. Fluency with UI and product workflow tools.
7. A track record of building empowering, maker-focused tools that push beyond the status quo.

If you bring any of these, they'll amplify our combined impact even further:

1. Experience collaborating with creative and art directors, motion designers, audio designers, or illustrators.
2. Experience and stories featuring open-source, agentic, generative, or automation-driven projects.
3. Familiarity with multimodal interfaces (voice, gesture, vision, AI-driven interactions).
4. Experience building for mobile platforms, especially iOS with Swift and modern development practices.

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.

To find a location’s zone designation, please refer to this resource. If a location of interest is not listed, please speak with a recruiter for additional information. 

Zone A:

$217,800—$326,800 USD

Zone B:

$207,000—$310,400 USD

Zone C:

$196,100—$294,100 USD

Zone D:

$185,200—$277,800 USD