Applied AI & Data Science, Vice President

About this role

BlackRock’s Investment & Trading Compliance engineering organization is reimagining how compliance professionals interact with regulations, investment guidelines, and business processes through artificial intelligence.

We are seeking a Vice President, Applied AI & Data Science to help define and deliver the next generation of AI-powered compliance capabilities across the Aladdin platform. This role combines expertise in machine learning, generative AI, information retrieval, and software product development to create intelligent solutions that transform how compliance workflows are executed. The role also requires strong product engineering experience and the ability to apply modern, AI-enabled development practices to deliver production-grade solutions.

You will work closely with product managers, software engineers, compliance specialists, AI researchers, and business stakeholders to build and scale AI solutions that automate complex workflows, accelerate knowledge discovery, improve decision-making, and enhance operational efficiency across global compliance functions.

This is a highly impactful role focused on bringing emerging AI technologies into production and delivering measurable outcomes for clients and internal users.

About the team

The Investment & Trading Compliance engineering team develops technology that helps investment professionals and compliance teams manage regulatory obligations and investment restrictions across global markets.

Our mission is to leverage artificial intelligence to transform compliance from reactive processes into intelligent, proactive, and scalable experiences.

Key areas of focus include:

• Agentic compliance workflows

• AI-powered compliance assistants and copilots

• Semantic search and knowledge retrieval

• Large language models and reasoning systems

• Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)

• Compliance knowledge graphs and rule intelligence

• AI-driven workflow automation

• Evaluation and governance of AI systems

• Enterprise AI platforms within Aladdin

What You’ll Do

Drive AI Innovation

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of advanced AI solutions that address complex compliance and regulatory challenges.

• Identify opportunities where AI can transform existing processes and unlock new capabilities for compliance professionals.

• Shape the long-term AI strategy and roadmap for Investment & Trading Compliance.

Build Intelligent AI Systems

• Design and implement solutions leveraging large language models, agentic frameworks, retrieval systems, and enterprise knowledge platforms.

• Develop approaches for semantic search, intelligent document retrieval, workflow orchestration, and reasoning over compliance knowledge.

• Partner with engineering teams to deliver highly scalable, production-grade AI services.

• Apply modern product engineering practices across the software and product development lifecycle, including the use of AI to accelerate design exploration, prototyping, implementation, testing, code review, and documentation.

• Articulate architectural trade-offs and design options, including their impact on scalability, resilience, cost, and delivery velocity.

Advance Applied AI Research

• Evaluate emerging trends and technologies across generative AI, agentic architectures, retrieval systems, and foundation models.

• Establish experimentation frameworks to validate new approaches and technologies.

• Collaborate with internal AI research teams to translate innovative concepts into real-world business solutions.

Own AI Quality and Governance

• Define evaluation methodologies, success metrics, benchmarking strategies, and monitoring frameworks for AI solutions.

• Drive continuous improvement through model evaluation, user feedback, and operational telemetry.

• Ensure AI solutions meet BlackRock standards for responsible AI, transparency, security, and reliability.

Partner Across the Firm

• Collaborate with engineering, product, legal, compliance, and AI platform teams to deliver business value through AI.

• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Influence senior stakeholders and drive alignment across multiple organizations.

Mentor and Lead

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to data scientists, machine learning engineers, and software engineers.

• Promote best practices in experimentation, evaluation, AI engineering, and product development.

• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.

About you

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline.

• Significant experience developing and deploying machine learning or AI solutions in production environments.

• Demonstrated expertise applying data science and AI techniques to solve complex business problems.

• Strong programming skills in Python and experience working within modern software development environments.

• Experience partnering with software engineering teams to operationalize AI solutions at enterprise scale.

• Experience applying modern product engineering practices to deliver scalable, production-grade solutions.

• Familiarity with AI-enabled SDLC and PDLC practices, including specification-driven development, AI-assisted development, testing, code review, and documentation.

• Experience with modern AI development tools such as Devin, Windsurf, Claude Code, or similar.

• Ability to articulate architectural trade-offs and design options, including impacts on scalability, resilience, cost, and delivery velocity.

• Familiarity with API design principles, event-driven architecture, and quality practices such as test-driven and behavior-driven development.

• Ability to influence technical strategy and drive initiatives across organizational boundaries.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred

• Experience with large language models (LLMs), generative AI, and agentic AI systems.

• Experience building semantic search, retrieval, recommendation, or knowledge discovery platforms.

• Familiarity with embeddings, vector search, ranking systems, and information retrieval methodologies.

• Experience establishing AI evaluation frameworks and model quality metrics.

• Understanding of AI governance, model risk management, and responsible AI principles.

• Experience in financial services, regulatory technology, compliance technology, or enterprise SaaS platforms.

• Experience with cloud-native AI architectures and modern ML platforms.

Technologies We Use

Examples of technologies and platforms used by the team include:

• Python

• SQL

• Azure AI Services

• OpenAI and enterprise foundation models

• Retrieval and search platforms

• Embedding and vector search technologies

• Machine learning frameworks

• Knowledge management systems

• Distributed cloud platforms

• Observability and AI evaluation tooling

• API and event-driven architectures

• AI-assisted software development tools

• Automated testing and continuous delivery practices

Our Impact

Our team is building the foundation for the future of compliance technology at BlackRock. We are creating intelligent systems that help users search vast compliance knowledge bases, automate complex workflows, reason across regulations and investment restrictions, and deliver AI-powered experiences directly within Aladdin.

The successful candidate will play a critical role in defining how AI transforms compliance operations for BlackRock and our clients globally.

Our benefits

To help you stay energized, engaged and inspired, we offer a wide range of employee benefits including: retirement investment and tools designed to help you in building a sound financial future; access to education reimbursement; comprehensive resources to support your physical health and emotional well-being; family support programs; 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.

Guidance on AI use for candidates

At BlackRock, AI has long been part of how we work – enhancing decision-making, improving operations, and helping us deliver better outcomes for clients. We encourage candidates to use AI thoughtfully to learn, prepare, and work more effectively; but during our interview process, we want to focus on getting to know you through your own experiences, thinking, and judgment. To support you, we’ve provided guidance on when and how to use AI during our hiring process so you can approach each step with confidence and showcase your best self.

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.

To learn more about BlackRock, please visit Careers.BlackRock.com. We also encourage you to get to know us on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, X, and TikTok.

BlackRock is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.  We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to age, disability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation and other protected characteristics at law.