Head of AlphaGen - Investor Research Product Engineering, Director

BlackRock • New York, NY

1d • $225,000 - $285,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a visionary, strategic, and execution-oriented leader to serve as the Head of AlphaGen Investor Research Product Engineering. This role centralizes end-to-end ownership of the AlphaGen’s research product estate spanning research lifecycle with an explicit focus on eliminating fragmented operational burden and establishing a single accountable organization for AlphaGen’s modernization and future growth. You will drive a unified product and transformation strategy that accelerates evolution toward a cloud-native, AI-first research ecosystem. Key initiatives include retiring legacy tooling, modernizing core runtimes, and creating scalable self-service workflows that shorten research-to-production from months to hours. This transformation enables AlphaGen’s Investor Research Solutions & Services to focus on high-value quantitative partnership with the Portfolio Management Group (PMG), while Investor Research product (under your leadership) provides a robust foundation, reusability, and productized research capabilities to support and scale alpha generation efforts. AlphaGen Investor Research Product is PMG’s strategic research-technology engine. In this role, you will lead the organization responsible for delivering a cloud-native, AI-powered, self-service suite of products that accelerates the end-to-end lifecycle of data, signals, and models all while working closely with the Alphagen platform team in providing the operational backbone required for reliability, resiliency, security, and scale.

Requirements

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent practical experience. An advanced degree is a plus.
• Strategic Engineering Leadership: Proven experience leading large-scale engineering organizations through product transformation initiatives (e.g., platform modernization, cloud migration, operating model changes). Demonstrated success in setting vision and executing across complex, multi-year technology programs.
• Technical Depth (Strong understanding of): Alpha generation workflows or closely related quantitative research processes in finance/investments.
• Cloud technologies and cloud-native architectural patterns (e.g., microservices, containerization, distributed computing e.g. Ray).
• API-first platform design and developer experience best practices.
• AI/ML applications for workflow automation, data validation, and operational excellence
• Modern stack knowledge and skills – e.g. Python, Polars, Ray, MLFlow or equivalent technology
• Collaboration & Influence: Demonstrated strength in partnership-building and cross-functional collaboration. Able to influence and align product teams, platform/infrastructure teams, and governance bodies around a common vision and roadmap.
• Execution in Complexity: Ability to operate in complex market and organizational contexts, translating strategic objectives into actionable plans. Proven track record of driving innovation, navigating ambiguity, and delivering measurable outcomes at scale.
• Leadership Attributes: This leader exemplifies operating principles that set the tone for how the team works and evolves: AI-First, Human-in-the-Loop: Embraces AI-driven solutions as a default for efficiency and scale, while keeping expert human judgment in critical loops to ensure quality and trust.
• Platform Over People: Prioritizes building robust platforms and automation over relying on individual heroic efforts, enabling sustainable and scalable growth.
• Single Front Door: Advocates for a unified user experience where researchers and stakeholders have one intuitive portal for all their needs, simplifying access and support.
• Standardization Everywhere: Drives consistency in tools, processes, and data across the board, reducing complexity and improving interoperability and maintainability.
• Self-Service as the Default: Champions self-service capabilities, empowering users to accomplish tasks independently (from data ingestion to model deployment) without bespoke engineering work.
• Deep Co-Ownership with PMG: Fosters a culture of partnership with the Portfolio Management Group, aligning closely on priorities, sharing roadmaps and KPIs, and co-owning outcomes to ensure the platform truly meets investment teams’ needs.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership & Transformation Execution
• Strategy Development
• Clear Ownership
• Partnership Building & Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Cross-Organization Partnerships
• Governance & Standards
• User Engagement & Adoption (Self-Service by Default)
• User-Centric Design
• Frictionless Pipeline
• Product Engineering Leadership (What Researchers Use)
• Core Frameworks & SDKs
• AI-Enabled Tooling
• Model Lifecycle Governance
• Product Infrastructure Leadership (Systems the Platform Runs On)
• Foundational Systems Collaboration
• Compute & Runtime
• Observability & Operations
• DevOps & CI/CD
• Reliability & Production Standards
• Operational Automation
• Legacy Modernization & Tech Stack Evolution
• Cloud Migration
• Next-Gen Platform Architecture
• Market and Business Insight / “North Star” Alignment
• Industry & Internal Insight
• Define the North Star

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) so you can relax, recharge and be there for the people you care about

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees