Head of Workforce Optimization

Block is one company built from many blocks, all united by the same purpose: economic empowerment. We build technology that increases access and independence for sellers, individuals, and artists around the world. Working at Block means working on and across our brands—Square, Cash App, Afterpay, TIDAL, Spiral, and Proto - in roles that connect, enable, and push all of them forward faster. We’re remote-first by design and operate with intelligence at the center of everything we do. At Block, you'll be challenged by some of the brightest, most creative minds in the industry and have the tools and autonomy to do the most meaningful work of your career. The Role Workforce Optimization sits within Block Operations and connects planning, operations, finance, product, engineering, and our global partner network. Reporting to the Head of Operations, you will lead the combined Workforce Optimization function supporting customer-facing operations and regulated Risk & Compliance work across thousands of internal and external analysts / customer advocates, and multiple vendors around the world. You will create one operating model for forecasting, staffing, real-time management, vendor governance, analytics, and automation. This will give Block the capacity and specialist skills it needs while balancing service, quality, regulatory obligations, and cost. This is an opportunity to shape how a global workforce of employees, partners, and AI systems works together and to move the function from automated visibility toward predictive, increasingly self-optimizing decisions. You Will • Set the strategy and operating model for the combined Workforce Management function, establishing clear ownership, common methods, decision rights, and a measurable maturity roadmap. • Own long-range forecasting and capacity planning across a 12–36 month horizon, translating customer demand, regulatory cycles, audits, incidents, product changes, and automation into hiring, partner, and financial plans. • Connect long-range plans to 1–8 week staffing commitments, schedules, and intraday actions so operations can address coverage and capacity risks before service or regulatory commitments are affected. • Define service and staffing strategies across customer support and back-office work, balancing response times, backlog, quality, specialist skills, employee experience, occupancy, resilience, and cost. • Establish consistent governance for global business process outsourcing partners, including capacity locks, performance measures, business reviews, corrective actions, and 24/7 escalation protocols. • Build a trusted analytics foundation with shared metric definitions, live performance visibility, forecast-accuracy tracking, scenario planning, and clear narratives that help leaders act. • Partner with product, engineering, data science, and operations teams to prioritize automation by measurable value, incorporate expected automation benefits into plans, and create effective ways of working across people and AI systems. • Embed regulatory capacity planning and quality feedback loops into the broader model while preserving the controls and domain expertise required for Risk & Compliance operations. • Lead workforce incidents and capacity escalations with clear response standards, after-action reviews, near-miss tracking, and durable improvements to processes and tools. • Align operations, finance, compliance, vendor, product, and executive leaders on assumptions, tradeoffs, commitments, and emerging risks. • Build, develop, and organize a multidisciplinary team spanning planning, real-time management, analytics, tooling, and vendor governance, while creating clear development paths and reducing key-person dependencies. You Have • A minimum of 15 years of related experience within Workforce Management, Operations, Data Science or related functions. • Experience leading and transforming a global Workforce Management function with responsibility for forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, real-time management, workforce analytics, and vendor governance. • Experience supporting both high-volume customer operations and back-office or regulated operations, with an understanding of how their demand patterns, service measures, skills, and controls differ. • Demonstrated success building operating models and teams across regions, internal employees, and outsourced partners while maintaining service, quality, resilience, and financial discipline. • Experience moving workforce decisions from manual reporting toward automated and predictive systems using data, statistical or machine-learning models, scenario planning, and clear human guardrails. • The ability to translate complex operational and financial data into decisions, influence senior leaders across functions, and create alignment when priorities or incentives compete. • Experience partnering with product, engineering, data science, finance, operations, and compliance teams to turn business changes and automation roadmaps into credible workforce plans. • Experience establishing controls for regulated capacity, vendor quality, incidents, and corrective actions, with sound judgment about when efficiency gains introduce unacceptable risk. • A record of developing leaders and specialists, clarifying accountability, and leading teams through significant organizational and technological change. Technologies We Use and Teach • Assembled, Snowflake, SQL, Google Workspace, Block-built planning and reporting applications, and AI and automation tools. We do not expect you to arrive knowing every tool; we value the ability to choose and govern the right systems for the work. 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 l