Senior Engineering Team Director - Aladdin Engineering ETF Systems Engineering
AI summary of the role
Senior leadership role heading the ETF Systems engineering organization at BlackRock, accountable for the technical vision, delivery, operational excellence, talent strategy, and AI transformation of the platform powering iShares' primary markets business.
What you’ll do
- Define and drive the long-term technical vision for the ETF engineering platform, aligning with Aladdin-wide architecture standards.
- Own domain architecture decisions across ESP and adjacent systems, including microservices, Kafka event-driven architectures, cloud-native infrastructure, and API design.
- Lead the AI/GenAI adoption strategy, including tool evaluation, governance, and scaled implementation across the engineering organization.
- Oversee delivery across multiple product engineering teams in an Agile/SAFe framework, managing cross-team dependencies and external integrations.
What you’ll bring
- 15+ years of progressive software engineering experience, with 5+ years in senior leadership roles managing large, globally distributed teams.
- Deep expertise in building and operating high-availability, mission-critical financial systems at scale.
- Strong technical foundation in Java, microservices, cloud-native (Azure/AWS), Kafka, distributed databases, and modern CI/CD.
- Proven track record of driving organizational design, talent development, and engineering culture in a regulated environment.
Technologies
Java · microservices · Kafka · Azure · AWS · CI/CD · AI/GenAI · SAFe · API design · distributed databases
About BlackRock
Global asset manager and fiduciary serving institutions, advisors, governments, and individuals through iShares, Aladdin, public markets, private markets, and retirement solutions.
Public · 5000+ people
Source and classification
Internal deployment & tooling · Evidence for this classification:
About this role About Aladdin Engineering Aladdin is BlackRock’s end-to-end investment management and operations platform — trusted by hundreds of institutional clients and advisors globally, supporting over $21 trillion in assets across the investment lifecycle. The Aladdin Engineering Group designs and scales technology for tomorrow’s challenges. We build innovative solutions that serve both BlackRock and our global client ecosystem — operating at the speed of a startup with the reach and resources of the world’s largest asset manager. Our engineers take emotional ownership of what they build, shipping products that clients rely on every day. About ETF Systems The ETF Systems Engineering team builds the technology powering BlackRock’s iShares primary markets business — the world’s largest ETF franchise. The team owns the ETF Servicing Platform (ESP), a multi-tenant platform at
More from the job description
About this role About Aladdin Engineering Aladdin is BlackRock’s end-to-end investment management and operations platform — trusted by hundreds of institutional clients and advisors globally, supporting over $21 trillion in assets across the investment lifecycle. The Aladdin Engineering Group designs and scales technology for tomorrow’s challenges. We build innovative solutions that serve both BlackRock and our global client ecosystem — operating at the speed of a startup with the reach and resources of the world’s largest asset manager. Our engineers take emotional ownership of what they build, shipping products that clients rely on every day. About ETF Systems The ETF Systems Engineering team builds the technology powering BlackRock’s iShares primary markets business — the world’s largest ETF franchise. The team owns the ETF Servicing Platform (ESP), a multi-tenant platform at the heart of the ETF ecosystem, enabling ETF Issuers, Authorized Participants, and Service Providers to meet and grow demand for the ETFs they manage, custody, or make markets in. The engineering organization also owns a suite of mission-critical applications including Basket Management, Order Capture, Order Fulfillment and Custom Basket Negotiation serving clients from ETF Capital Markets, Portfolio Management and Operations across the globe. Role Overview We are seeking a Head of Engineering t [... source excerpt omitted ...] execution, operational excellence, talent strategy, and AI transformation of a platform that underpins one of the fastest-growing segments of the global asset management industry. You will partner closely with Product Management, iShares business leadership, and Aladdin platform teams to scale systems that support new market expansion, new asset classes, and platform commercialization. The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise with strong organizational leadership — someone who takes emotional ownership of outcomes, inspires engineering excellence, and thrives in a fast-paced, high-accountability environment. Key Responsibilities Technical Leadership & Architecture [... source excerpt omitted ...] sk & Control Self-Assessment) obligations and audit readiness. Partner with Risk, Compliance, Legal, and Cybersecurity teams to deliver “controls by design” — ensuring regulatory requirements are embedded in architecture, not bolted on. Own production stability, support escalation, and incident management for ETF applications globally — driving continuous improvement in MTTR and operational efficiency. Talent, Culture & Inclusion Lead, develop, and inspire a globally distributed engineering organization across multiple time zones and cultures. Own the engineering talent strategy: hiring, promotion calibration, organizational design, spans of control, and workforce planning. Dev
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