[Hiring] Director of AI Commercialization @Block

Role Description

Block is building a new generation of AI-powered products with the potential to create entirely new ways for businesses to operate, engage with customers, and grow. We are looking for an experienced commercial leader to turn these emerging products into meaningful businesses.

The Director of AI Commercialization will own the path from product to pilot to commercial validation, and turn this into a repeatable go-to-market motion across Block’s emerging AI portfolio. This role will focus on enterprise customers and strategic partners.

This is a senior, highly entrepreneurial role, and requires someone who has done this before:

• Taken technically complex, early-stage products into the market.
• Secured sophisticated enterprise customers and partners.
• Built and converted pilots.
• Established pricing and commercial models.
• Created a sales and partnership motion that could scale.

Initially, this leader will be highly hands-on:

• Develop our most important enterprise customers and partners.
• Structure our earliest commercial engagements.
• Work alongside Product and Engineering to shape what we build.
• Determine how we scale the motion and build the organization required to support it.

What You’ll Do

• Own AI commercialization.
• Develop and own the commercialization strategy for Block’s emerging AI products, including:
  • Target markets.
  • Enterprise customer segments.
  • Partner types.
  • Use cases.
  • Positioning.
  • Pricing.
  • Packaging.
  • Routes to market.
• Translate technically sophisticated AI capabilities into clear, differentiated value propositions for enterprise customers and partners.
• Assess market opportunities and determine where Block has the strongest right to win.
• Establish clear commercial milestones and determine when products are ready to move from experimentation to broader distribution.
• Operate as the senior commercial counterpart to Product and Engineering leaders building Block’s AI portfolio.
• Bring together cross-functional infrastructure required to support this motion at scale.
• Win lighthouse enterprise customers and strategic partners:
  • Personally source, develop, and close relationships with sophisticated enterprise customers and strategic partners.
  • Engage credibly with C-suite executives and senior technology, product, operations, business development, and commercial leaders.
  • Identify where strategic partnerships can accelerate distribution, unlock new use cases, or create differentiated product capabilities.
  • Sell products that may still be evolving, creating conviction around the vision while setting appropriate expectations about what exists today.
  • Build a portfolio of lighthouse customers and partners that provides product validation, commercial proof points, references, distribution, and a foundation for broader adoption.
• Build pilots that become scaled commercial relationships:
  • Design commercial pilots with enterprise customers and partners with clear objectives, success metrics, economics, timelines, and paths to production and expansion.
  • Own the progression from initial conversation → pilot → production deployment or partnership launch → scaled commercial relationship.
  • Work directly with customers, partners, Product, and Engineering throughout early implementations.
  • Distinguish between strategically important market feedback and bespoke requests that should not drive the roadmap.
  • Use early engagements to rapidly test product-market fit, willingness to pay, partnership models, implementation requirements, and the durability of demand.
• Create the repeatable GTM and partnership model:
  • Turn what we learn from early customers and partners into a scalable commercial playbook.
  • Establish segmentation, qualification, pricing, contracting, sales process, partner models, implementation, customer success, and expansion motions.
  • Determine when products should be sold directly, through strategic partners, through existing Block Sales and Partnerships teams, or through a combination of channels.
  • Identify opportunities to leverage Block’s existing enterprise relationships and broader ecosystem.
  • Build the pipeline management, forecasting, metrics, and operating cadence required to manage the business.
• Build the organization:
  • Start as a hands-on commercial leader rather than immediately building a large team.
  • Determine what capabilities and roles are required as product-market fit develops.
  • Recruit and lead a high-performing commercial organization when the opportunity is ready to scale.
  • Create a thoughtful path for successful products to graduate from incubation into Block’s broader GTM organization where appropriate.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of relevant commercial experience, including significant leadership responsibility in enterprise technology.
• Proven commercialization leader, not simply an experienced enterprise seller or partnerships executive.
• Direct, demonstrated experience taking new or emerging technology products from early market entry through commercial scale.
• A track record of personally securing lighthouse enterprise customers and strategic partners, structuring pilots and partnerships, and converting them into scaled commercial relationships.
• Deep experience selling complex technology to large enterprises and working with sophisticated strategic partners.
• Established credibility engaging C-suite, senior technical, product, business development, and commercial executives.
• Experience commercializing AI, data infrastructure, developer platforms, cloud infrastructure, or similarly complex and rapidly evolving technology.
• Strong understanding of how enterprises and strategic partners evaluate, pilot, procure, integrate, distribute, and scale emerging technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to develop pricing, packaging, partnership structures, commercial models, and routes to market where no established playbook exists.
• Strong product judgment and a history of working as a true partner to Product and Engineering.
• Experience building a new business inside of a technology company.
• Experience building and leading high-performing commercial teams.
• The ability to operate at both the strategic and execution levels — from defining a market strategy to personally getting a difficult enterprise deal or strategic partnership across the line.
• Comfort making decisions with incomplete information and adjusting quickly as the product and market evolve.

Pay Transparency

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.

All Zones: ($239,600 - $359,400)

Application Guidelines

Candidates may submit up to 9 active applications within a 60-day period. Reapplications to the same role are accepted 90 days after a previous application has been reviewed.

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.

Contact us

Contact us here with hiring practice or data usage questions.

Benefits

• Remote work.
• Medical insurance.
• Flexible time off.
• Retirement savings plans.
• Modern family planning.

Company Description

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:

• Square makes commerce and financial services accessible to sellers.
• Cash App is the easy way to spend, send, and store money.
• Afterpay is transforming the way customers manage their spending over time.
• TIDAL is a music platform that empowers artists to thrive as entrepreneurs.
• Bitkey is a simple self-custody wallet built for bitcoin.
• Proto is a suite of bitcoin mining products and services.

Together, we’re helping build a financial system that is open to everyone.