Head of Workforce Optimization

Block•Bay Area, CA, United States of America, CA

7h•$217,800 - $326,800•Remote

About The Position

Workforce Optimization sits within Block Operations and connects planning, operations, finance, product, engineering, and Block’s global partner network. Reporting to the Head of Operations, this role leads the combined Workforce Optimization function supporting customer-facing operations and regulated Risk & Compliance work across thousands of internal and external analysts and customer advocates, as well as multiple vendors worldwide. The role establishes a unified operating model for forecasting, staffing, real-time management, vendor governance, analytics, and automation. It develops the workforce capacity and specialist skills Block needs while balancing service, quality, regulatory obligations, and cost. The position will shape how a global workforce of employees, partners, and AI systems work together, advancing the function from automated visibility toward predictive and increasingly self-optimizing decisions.

Requirements

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, including 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, understanding differences in demand patterns, service measures, skills, and controls.
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.
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.

Responsibilities

Set the strategy and operating model for the combined Workforce Management function, establishing ownership, common methods, decision rights, and a measurable maturity roadmap.
Own long-range forecasting and capacity planning across a 12–36 month horizon, translating 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 to 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 decision-support narratives.
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 Risk & Compliance controls and domain expertise.
Lead workforce incidents and capacity escalations with 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; create development paths and reduce key-person dependencies.