Head of AI Developer Platform

About this role

Aladdin is BlackRock’s unified technology and data platform used by BlackRock and many of the world’s largest Asset Managers and Investors. The Aladdin Platform Engineering organization is the Engineering Pillar within Aladdin responsible for building and operating the technology platform that powers Aladdin and includes the Developer Platform, the Core Platform and the Control Platform. Within Aladdin Platform Engineering, we are looking to bring on a senior technology leader to be the Head of AI Developer Platform.

Responsibilities 

1. Own AI Native SDLC & Engineering Productivity 

• Define and operationalize an AIfirst, agent driven SDLC embedded into the Developer Platform, spanning design, build, test, release, and operate phases, including: 
  • Agent assisted design, code generation, refactoring, and documentation 
  • Agent driven test generation, coverage analysis, defect intelligence, and built-in quality and resilience signals 
  • Intelligent release validation, change risk assessment, and deployment readiness 
  • Continuous functional, integration, regression, performance, and resilience testing orchestrated as first-class SDLC stages rather than post hoc controls 
  • Continuous learning loops that improve software, delivery workflows, and AI agents over time 
• AI Vendor, Tooling & Platform Integration 
  • Drive evaluation, selection, and governance of AI developer tools and vendors integrated into the AI Developer Platform, ensuring capabilities are secure, production grade, and aligned to Aladdin’s architecture, risk posture, and engineering standards. 
  • Ensure AI tools are platform integrated rather than point solutions, delivered through standardized onboarding, quality gates, observability, lifecycle management, and Responsible AI controls in partnership with Risk, Security, Legal, and Architecture. 
• Lead adoption of PDLC agents delivered through the Developer Platform, aligned to core engineering personas and architecture/design principles: 
  • Developers:
  • Testers / QE:
  • Operators / SREs:
  • Ensure quality, resilience, and risk prevention are embedded as default behaviors within PDLC agents, rather than treated as separate processes or late-stage controls. 

2. Own the evolution of continuous validation capabilities across the SDLC, including: 

• Performance, load, spike, and concurrency testing integrated into CI/CD pipelines 
• Chaos engineering and fault injection experiments executed in preproduction environments 
• Game Day testing and operational readiness simulations to validate incident response, observability, and recovery paths 
• Establish clear skill expectations and enablement paths for developers, testers, and operators working in an AI augmented delivery model,

3. AI Developer Platform Context Engineering & Enablement 

• Own the workforce enablement and distribution layer for the Developer Platform (through IDEs), ensuring AI capabilities and PDLC agents are delivered as secure, reusable, composable platform services within Engineering Services rather than fragmented tools. 
• Lead context engineering and context graph strategy for the Developer Platform, including: 
  • Defining and evolving enterprise context graphs
  • Ensuring AI agents and PDLC agents have governed access to the right context at the right time, with controlled blast radius 
• Driving reuse of context primitives across SDLC, agent-based validation, and operational workflows 

4. Own platform level capabilities for test data and environment management, including: 

• Production aligned preproduction environments that enable reliable end-to-end validation 
• Repeatable, governed test data strategies (refresh, reset/replay, synthetic data) that support functional, performance, and resilience testing 
• Pre-Prod Environment stability, drift detection, and telemetry-based health signals as inputs to release decisions 

• Be a Champion and Lead governance for context ownership, freshness, versioning, and reuse to prevent drift and repeated failures at scale. 

5. Engineering Excellence, Culture & Leadership 

• Build and lead a high-performance, globally distributed AI Developer Platform organization within Engineering Services. 
• Evangelize AI native, agent driven delivery practices across Aladdin while balancing innovation, operational stability, and risk discipline. 

7. Governance, Risk & Responsible AI 

• Own policy, governance, and control frameworks for AI usage and PDLC agents within the Developer Platform, ensuring alignment with firmwide risk, compliance, and Responsible AI standards. 
• Own and mitigate technology and AI related risks for the Developer Platform, representing Engineering Services in risk and control governance forums. 

8. Collaboration & Enterprise Impact 

• Work closely with business leaders, product managers, domain architects, and delivery teams to translate business requirements into scalable, secure AI Developer Platform and PDLC agent capabilities. 
• Collaborate with Platform Engineering, Product Engineering, Product leadership to ensure the Developer Platform meets the growth demands of Aladdin’s clients and partners. 

For New York, NY Only the salary range for this position is USD$275,000.00 - USD$350,000.00 . Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus, and benefits including healthcare, leave benefits, and retirement benefits. BlackRock operates a pay-for-performance compensation philosophy and your total compensation may vary based on role, location, and firm, department and individual performance.

Our benefits

To help you stay energized, engaged and inspired, we offer a wide range of benefits including a strong retirement plan, tuition reimbursement, comprehensive healthcare, support for working parents and Flexible Time Off (FTO) so you can relax, recharge and be there for the people you care about.

Our hybrid work model

BlackRock’s hybrid work model is designed to enable a culture of collaboration and apprenticeship that enriches the experience of our employees, while supporting flexibility for all. Employees are currently required to work at least 4 days in the office per week, with the flexibility to work from home 1 day a week. Some business groups may require more time in the office due to their roles and responsibilities. We remain focused on increasing the impactful moments that arise when we work together in person – aligned with our commitment to performance and innovation. As a new joiner, you can count on this hybrid model to accelerate your learning and onboarding experience here at BlackRock.

About BlackRock

At BlackRock, we are all connected by one mission: to help more and more people experience financial well-being.  Our clients, and the people they serve, are saving for retirement, paying for their children’s educations, buying homes and starting businesses. Their investments also help to strengthen the global economy: support businesses small and large; finance infrastructure projects that connect and power cities; and facilitate innovations that drive progress.

This mission would not be possible without our smartest investment – the one we make in our employees. It’s why we’re dedicated to creating an environment where our colleagues feel welcomed, valued and supported with networks, benefits and development opportunities to help them thrive.

For additional information on BlackRock, please visit @blackrock | Twitter: @blackrock | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/blackrock

BlackRock is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity to all applicants and existing employees, and we evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, creed, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity/expression), sexual orientation, age, ancestry, physical or mental disability, ma