AI Platform & Application Engineer - Vice President

BlackRock•New York, NY

1d•$162,000 - $215,000•Hybrid

About The Position

BlackRock is seeking a Vice President of AI Platform Engineering to lead the design and delivery of enterprise AI capabilities for technologist enablement and next-generation platform services. The role combines technical expertise in modern AI systems with engineering execution and organizational leadership, helping embed AI safely, securely, and effectively into BlackRock’s engineering ecosystem at scale. The AI Platform Engineering team is part of Platform Engineering, which builds and operates foundational systems for Aladdin and BlackRock’s enterprise technology landscape. The team is reimagining how software is built, reviewed, tested, modernized, and operated through intelligent systems, with a focus on developer enablement, large-scale modernization, and enterprise AI governance. Its work spans thousands of developers and multiple business domains in a complex financial technology environment. The position leads platform architecture and delivery, works across engineering, product, and security teams, and manages and develops engineers and senior individual contributors. It also involves communicating AI capabilities, trade-offs, risks, and business value to senior stakeholders. The role is based on BlackRock’s hybrid work model: employees are currently required to work in the office at least four days per week, with the flexibility to work from home one day per week. Some business groups may require additional office time.

Requirements

Strong experience building and operating production AI systems, including LLM-based workflows.
Solid understanding of modern AI practices, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, fine-tuning, and evaluation.
Proven experience designing and delivering shared platforms or services at scale.
Deep technical fluency in Java and Python, with hands-on experience building scalable, production-grade AI and platform services.
Experience designing APIs and operating services in a cloud environment.
Experience working with distributed cloud environments.
Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across teams.
Experience working in Agile development teams.

Nice To Haves

Experience working on developer productivity or platform engineering initiatives.
Prior people-management experience, including leading small- to mid-sized engineering teams.
Familiarity with enterprise governance, security, and risk considerations for AI systems.

Responsibilities

Design scalable AI architecture using LLMs, RAG, fine-tuning, and model optimization techniques.
Establish evaluation frameworks to measure model quality, control hallucinations, and assess precision/recall trade-offs.
Lead the design and implementation of scalable AI platform capabilities used across the software development lifecycle.
Partner with product and security teams to ensure AI solutions are safe, compliant, and production-ready.
Break down complex problems into clear plans and milestones, and drive delivery through ambiguity.
Lead buy-versus-build decisions by evaluating third-party solutions alongside internal capabilities.
Identify technical risks and dependencies early, and provide mitigation or escalation as needed.
Coordinate across engineering teams and time zones to deliver shared outcomes.
Translate complex AI capabilities into business value and communicate progress, trade-offs, and risks to senior stakeholders.
Lead and develop a team of engineers and senior individual contributors through coaching and technical mentorship.
Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Support emerging leaders by delegating responsibility and increasing their scope over time.