AI Product Engineer, Director

BlackRock • New York, NY

17h • Hybrid

About The Position

At BlackRock, technology is fundamental to how we serve clients and operate at scale . Aladdin—our industry‑leading, end‑to‑end investment management platform—embodies this by combining deep financial expertise with advanced data and AI capabilities. We are seeking a Director of AI Platform / Engineering to provide technical and strategic leadership within the Aladdin AI Engineering organization . In this role, you will be responsible for shaping the direction of Aladdin’s AI platform, leading high‑impact engineering initiatives, and ensuring the delivery of scalable, reliable, and responsible AI solutions across investment, operations, and data science workflows. This role requires a blend of hands‑on technical depth , architectural leadership , and people and delivery leadership . You will work closely with senior engineering leaders, product managers, data scientists, and business stakeholders to translate AI strategy into production‑grade platforms and services.

Requirements

• Proven experience leading teams that build AI‑driven platforms and applications , including solutions leveraging large language models (LLMs) , AI Agents, agent tools and agent skills.
• Strong hands‑on familiarity with LLM frameworks such as LangChain , LlamaIndex , Semantic Kernel , or equivalent.
• Experience with Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) or comparable agent frameworks, including designing, orchestrating, and operating agent‑based systems in production.
• Deep understanding of agentic AI architectures , including multi‑agent coordination, tool invocation, and stateful reasoning workflows.
• Experience with prompt engineering and prompt tuning at scale, including performance, reliability, and safety optimization.
• Strong understanding of ML model evaluation , monitoring, and behavioral drift management in production systems.
• Experience integrating vector databases (e.g., Faiss , Chroma) into AI system architectures.
• Solid understanding of MLOps practices , including model lifecycle management, deployment pipelines, and observability.
• Experience leveraging AI native code editors and IDEs (e.g., Copilot enabled IDEs, agent assisted development environments, or similar AI augmented tooling) to improve developer productivity, code quality, and delivery velocity.
• Experience establishing best practices and guardrails for the responsible use of AI native development tools, including considerations for security, IP protection, compliance, and code quality.
• Ability to evaluate and guide adoption of emerging AI powered developer tools, balancing innovation with maintainability, governance, and platform standards.
• Strong awareness of responsible AI principles , governance, and risk management when deploying AI systems in regulated environments.
• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience , including significant leadership of large‑scale, distributed systems.
• Proven track record of technical leadership , owning platform architecture and multi‑team delivery.
• Deep expertise in object‑oriented programming , particularly Java and Python .
• Strong experience designing and operating scalable APIs, microservices, and distributed systems in production.
• Extensive experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP acceptable).
• Strong understanding of event‑driven architectures , messaging systems (e.g., Kafka), and asynchronous processing.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Hands‑on experience with relational and NoSQL datastores , including Cassandra.
• Strong grasp of Agile delivery models , SDLC governance, and operational excellence.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across teams and senior leadership.

Responsibilities

• Set the t echnical vision and architecture for Aladdin’s AI platform, including LLM‑powered and agentic AI systems.
• Lead the design and evolution of scalable AI/ML platform services , APIs, and microservices that support Aladdin’s global user base.
• Drive architectural decisions across distributed systems, ensuring reliability, scalability, security, and operational excellence.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards, design patterns, and best practices across AI platform teams.
• Ensure AI solutions are built with strong considerations for governance, observability, resilience, and responsible AI .
• Own delivery outcomes for multiple concurrent initiatives, balancing near‑term execution with long-term platform evolution.
• Partner with product management to define roadmaps, prioritize investments, and align execution with business outcomes.
• Oversee production readiness, including design reviews, risk assessments, release management, and operational support.
• Drive continuous improvement in engineering workflows, quality, and delivery predictability.
• Lead, mentor, and develop senior engineers, technical leads, and managers.
• Build a strong engineering culture centered on ownership, rigor, collaboration, and technical excellence.
• Support hiring, onboarding, performance management, and succession planning.
• Act as a senior technical voice across leadership forums and architectural reviews.
• Partner closely with platform, product, data science, and infrastructure leaders.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to senior leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
• Represent Aladdin AI Engineering in cross-organizational initiatives and governance forums.

Benefits

• employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus, and benefits including healthcare, leave benefits, and retirement benefits
• strong retirement plan
• tuition reimbursement
• comprehensive healthcare
• support for working parents
• Flexible Time Off (FTO)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director