People Intelligence Architect

Block; New York (NY); On-site; USD 135,000 - 203,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work

Medical insurance

Flexible time off

Retirement savings plans

Family planning assistance

Job summary

Block is seeking a senior, individual contributor who will own the end-to-end People data ecosystem. You will design architecture, write production code, and set the technical bar for how People data and AI work at Block.

You’ll operate at the intersection of data engineering, data science, people analytics, and agentic AI, hands-on enough to build the connective tissue and mentor peers by example.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant experience in data/AI roles.
• Experience designing end-to-end data systems and pipelines.
• Hands-on with data pipelines, ML workflows, and governance.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines unifying HR data sources.
• Model data for analytics and ML with focus on quality and governance.
• Build predictive/diagnostic models (attrition, hiring funnel, equity).
• Translate questions into rigorous analyses for leaders' decisions.
• Lead on engagement survey design, data collection, analysis, and insights.

Skills

Data engineering

Data science

LLMs & agentic AI

Systems thinking

Communication

Architecture & design

Tools

SQL

Python

dbt/Airflow

Cloud data warehouses

Job description

The Role

We're looking for a cross-disciplinary builder to own how our people data ecosystem comes together — from raw pipelines to predictive models to the agentic workflows that put insight into action. This is not a traditional People Analyst role. You won't just answer questions with dashboards; you'll design and build the end-to-end system that makes People data trustworthy, intelligent, and increasingly autonomous.

This is a senior individual contributor role. You'll lead through technical depth and craft rather than headcount — designing architecture, writing production code, and setting the technical bar for how People data and AI work at our company.

You'll operate at the intersection of data engineering, data science, people analytics, and agentic AI — fluent enough in each to see how the whole system connects, and hands‑on enough to build the connective tissue yourself.

You Will

• Design, build, and maintain reliable data pipelines that unify people data across HRIS, ATS, performance, compensation, and engagement systems.
• Model data for analytics and ML use, with a focus on quality, lineage, privacy, and governance of sensitive workforce data.
• Build predictive and diagnostic models (attrition, hiring funnel health, org network analysis, compensation equity, workforce planning).
• Translate ambiguous people questions into rigorous, defensible analyses — and translate results back into decisions leaders can act on.
• Partner on our semi-annual employee engagement survey — from instrument design and data collection to analysis, driver identification, and turning results into actionable insight for leaders.
• Design and deploy AI agents and automations that operationalize insight: monitoring signals, generating reports, drafting recommendations, and triggering workflows without manual effort.
• Establish the guardrails, evaluation, and human-in-the-loop patterns that make agentic systems safe and trustworthy on sensitive data.
• Own the architecture that ties pipelines, models, and agents into one coherent system — and continuously evolve it as tools and needs change.
• Set the technical direction and standards for People data and AI, and raise the bar through code review, design docs, and mentorship of peers (leading by influence, not by managing a team).
• Partner with People, Data Platform, Security, and Legal to ensure the system is compliant, scalable, and genuinely useful.

You Have

• 8+ years of relevant experience
• Proven experience building data pipelines (SQL, Python, dbt/Airflow or similar, cloud data warehouses).
• Solid data science foundation — statistics, ML, experiment design, and the judgment to know when a simple model beats a complex one.
• Working knowledge of people/HR data and the sensitivity, ethics, and nuance it demands.
• Hands‑on experience with LLMs and agentic frameworks — building automations, prompts, tool‑use, and evaluation loops.
• Strong systems thinking: you see how components connect and design for the whole, not just the part in front of you.
• Excellent communication — you can explain a model to an executive and a workflow to an engineer

Even Better

• Experience with people analytics platforms (Workday, Visier, etc.).
• Background in organizational network analysis or workforce planning.
• Experience deploying AI in regulated or privacy‑sensitive environments.

Why This Role is Difference

Most companies split this work across three or four people who rarely talk to each other — an engineer who builds pipes, an analyst who makes charts, and a data scientist who ships models into a void. You'll own the whole system, and use agentic AI to make it more than the sum of its parts. This is a role for a senior builder who wants deep technical ownership and impact without stepping off the tools to manage a team. If you're energized by building intelligent systems on top of the most human data a company has, this is for you.

We’re working to build a more inclusive economy where our customers have equal access to opportunity, and we strive to live by these same values in building our workplace. Block is an equal opportunity employer evaluating all employees and job applicants without regard to identity or any legally protected class. We will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and “fair chance” ordinances.

We believe in being fair, and are committed to an inclusive interview experience, including providing reasonable accommodations to disabled applicants throughout the recruitment process. We encourage applicants to share any needed accommodations with their recruiter, who will treat these requests as confidentially as possible. Want to learn more about what we’re doing to build a workplace that is fair and square? Check out our I+D page .

While there is no specific deadline to apply for this role, U.S. roles are typically open for an average of 55 days before being filled by a successful candidate. Please refer to the date listed at the top of this job page for when this role was first posted.

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 thisresource . If a location of interest is not listed, please speak with a recruiter for additional information.

Zone A:

$135,200 — $202,800 USD

Zone B:

$125,800 — $188,600 USD

Zone C:

$119,000 — $178,400 USD

Zone D:

$108,200 — $162,200 USD

Use of AI in Our Hiring Process

We may use automated AI tools to evaluate job applications for efficiency and consistency. These tools comply with local regulations, including bias audits, and we handle all personal data in accordance with state and local privacy laws.

Every benefit we offer is designed with one goal: empowering you to do the best work of your career while building the life you want. Remote work, medical insurance, flexible time off, retirement savings plans, and modern family planning are just some of our offering. Check out our other benefits at Block.

Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ) builds technology to increase access to the global economy. Each of our brands unlocks different aspects of the economy for more people.Squaremakes commerce and financial services accessible to sellers.Cash Appis the easy way to spend, send, and store money.Afterpayis transforming the way customers manage their spending over time.TIDALis a music platform that empowers artists to thrive as entrepreneurs.Bitkeyis a simple self‑custody wallet built for bitcoin.Protois a suite of bitcoin mining products and services. Together, we’re helping build a financial system that is open to everyone.