Director Principal Product Designer

About this role

About the Role:

This is a hands-on leadership role. We are looking for someone who is as comfortable working directly on product problems, prototypes and customer experiences as they are influencing senior stakeholders and setting direction.

Help shape the future of investment technology.

At BlackRock, design plays a critical role in helping investment professionals navigate complexity with confidence. As a Director, Product Design, you’ll help define the future of the Aladdin platform by designing sophisticated enterprise experiences used by institutional investors, portfolio managers, traders, risk managers, private market investors, and operations teams around the world.
This is a senior individual contributor role for a design leader who thrives on solving complex problems, influencing product strategy, and elevating design excellence across cross-functional teams.

About the Aladdin UX Design Team:
The Aladdin UX Design team creates the experiences behind one of the world’s leading investment and risk management platforms. We partner closely with Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders to transform complex financial workflows into intuitive, scalable, and trusted experiences.

Our team believes great enterprise software begins with a deep understanding of the people using it. We combine research, systems thinking, design craft, and emerging technologies to build products that empower better investment decisions.

About You:

• You are a senior design leader with deep experience in enterprise and financial technology environments. You think in systems, operate at platform scale, and are comfortable defining and delivering design strategy across complex, regulated products.

• You bring strong commercial awareness and understand how design drives business value, ensuring coherence across products, consistency across workflows, and alignment with business requirements.

• You are accountable not just for experience quality, but for measurable outcomes including client adoption, workflow efficiency, risk reduction, and decision effectiveness.

• Equally comfortable influencing executive decision-making and working through ambiguity, you operate confidently at both strategic and execution levels, getting close to the detail when needed.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead UX strategy for complex product areas across the Aladdin platform.

• Partner closely with Product Management, Engineering, and business leaders to shape product vision from concept through delivery.

• Translate business strategy, customer needs, and technical capabilities into intuitive, scalable user experiences.

• Shape coherent platform experiences by identifying opportunities that span products, teams, and investment workflows.

• Drive discovery through customer research, workshops, design sprints, prototyping, and iterative validation.

• Use qualitative research, product analytics, and experimentation to inform design decisions.

• Influence product direction and executive decision-making through compelling storytelling, frameworks, and design rationale.

• Champion design quality, systems thinking, accessibility, and consistency across the platform.

• Explore opportunities where AI and intelligent automation can enhance user workflows while maintaining clarity, trust, and human oversight.

• Leverage AI throughout the design process to accelerate research synthesis, concept generation, prototyping, and evaluation while maintaining high standards of design judgment.

• Define interaction models for AI-driven and data-intensive experiences

• Mentor designers and contribute to the growth of the design practice through coaching, critique, and thought leadership, while remaining an individual contributor.

• Contribute to design capability, standards, and organizational evolution.

Qualifications:
Required

• 12+ years of experience designing complex digital products, including significant experience with enterprise software.

• Demonstrated experience designing sophisticated financial products, investment platforms, private market platforms, trading systems, risk management tools, or similar financial technology solutions.

• Experience leading design across interconnected product ecosystems, balancing local product needs with platform-wide consistency.

• Strong understanding of designing for investors and financial professionals in complex, highly regulated environments, with the ability to translate sophisticated investment workflows into intuitive, effective user experiences.

• Work samples demonstrating strategic thinking, systems design, and end-to-end problem solving across complex enterprise experiences.

• Expertise in human-centered design, interaction design, information architecture, prototyping, and UX research methodologies.

• Experience influencing product strategy and partnering with executive stakeholders for better outcomes for users.

• Strong facilitation and communication skills, with the ability to align diverse stakeholders around user-centered outcomes.

• Experience working within Agile product development environments and cross-functional teams.

• Experience utilizing AI tools within the design process to enhance exploration, prototyping, and delivery.

• Experience designing with an AI-first mindset, considering how intelligent systems can augment user workflows and decision-making.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Design, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

AI & Data (Required)

• Experience designing AI-powered and data-intensive products, particularly in complex decision-support environments such as investment, risk, or portfolio workflows

• Ability to design intelligent workflows that integrate data, analytics, and AI to support expert user decision-making

• Strong understanding of designing for transparency, explainability, and trust in regulated financial systems

• Experience partnering with Engineering and Risk to operationalize AI within real-world user workflows.

• Familiarity with designing across structured and unstructured data domains, including alternative data and analytics platforms

You’ll Stand Out If:

• You continuously evolve your practice by experimenting with new technologies and design methods as a way to improve quality and efficiency.

• You've designed AI-powered experiences that help users make better decisions while maintaining transparency, trust, and appropriate human oversight.

• You've helped define interaction patterns, design systems, or platform principles that enabled multiple teams to deliver more coherent user experiences.

• You're known for bringing clarity to ambiguous problem spaces and influencing organizations beyond the boundaries of your immediate product team.

Candidates progressing to final stages will be asked to present 2–3 case studies demonstrating:

• Impact on complex enterprise or financial systems

• Provide examples of challenges overcome and trade-offs made

• Delivery of measurable user and business outcomes

• Approach to system-level and platform design challenges

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.