Associate, AI Data Scientist- Private Markets

Job Title: Associate, AI Data Scientist- Private Markets Company: BlackRock Job Category: Data Science Roles & Responsibilities: Job description ------------------- About this role You will join a multidisciplinary AI and data science team focused on applying advanced AI to high\-value challenges in private markets. The team brings together data science, engineering, product and domain expertise, and works closely with users to develop practical capabilities that improve how information is acquired, researched and managed. Your role \& impact ======================= As an Associate, AI Data Scientist, you will be a hands\-on technical contributor responsible for researching, building and scaling enterprise\-grade agentic AI capabilities. Working directly with users and senior technical leaders, you will translate complex private\-markets workflows into well\-evaluated systems that move from experimentation to governed production and sustained adoption. Your core mandate is to advance multi\-agent LLM systems through effective agent design patterns, rigorous evaluation and disciplined model engineering. You will develop workflows that plan, retrieve, reason, use tools, verify and escalate appropriately, while selecting the simplest architecture and model that can meet the required quality, latency, cost and control objectives. You will also help establish the lifecycle for open\-source small language models and LLMs, from model discovery and benchmarking through training, adaptation, fine\-tuning, deployment, monitoring and retirement. Your impact will be visible in stronger data quality, faster research, scalable automation and reusable AI capabilities that help BlackRock Preqin remain at the forefront of private\-markets data and technology. Your responsibilities ========================= * Build systematic evaluation harnesses using representative datasets, explicit quality dimensions, adversarial and edge\-case testing, regression suites, human feedback and monitored production outcomes. * Research and benchmark open\-source SLMs and LLMs for task fit, considering quality, inference performance, cost, licensing, security, deployment constraints and operational supportability; apply fit\-for\-purpose routing and batching where they improve efficiency. * Develop model\-adaptation strategies using prompt and context optimisation, supervised fine\-tuning, parameter\-efficient fine\-tuning or other suitable techniques, supported by governed dataset creation, experiment tracking, reproducibility and controlled promotion criteria. * Operate the lifecycle for trained and fine\-tuned open\-source models, including data and model versioning, lineage, experiment and artifact management, evaluation gates, registry and release controls, deployment, performance and drift monitoring, rollback, retraining triggers and retirement. * Own delivered reliability across testing, observability, latency, cost and maintainability, and diagnose model, data, prompt and orchestration failures in production. * Partner with engineering, product, risk, privacy, information security, legal and compliance colleagues to support responsible, secure and accountable use of AI. * Practical depth in LLM applications and agentic systems, including retrieval, tool use, planning, orchestration, memory or state management, structured outputs, verification and evaluation of non\-deterministic behaviour. * Ability to write production\-quality Python and work effectively across data preparation, model development, APIs, orchestration, testing, deployment and observability. * Sound judgment on model and architecture trade\-offs across efficacy, efficiency, security, licensing, maintainability and operational risk. Why this role 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. 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. Work Location: Karnataka, India Availability: Full time

* Design safe caching and reuse across retrieval, prompts, model responses, tool results and intermediate agent state, with clear cache keys, invalidation, freshness, access\-control and provenance requirements. * Build production\-quality Python components that integrate models with enterprise data, retrieval services, APIs, workflow orchestration and human\-review experiences. Required experience ======================= * Strong experience building and deploying AI or machine\-learning systems in an enterprise, SaaS, data\-product or similarly complex environment, with evidence of taking work beyond prototypes. * Hands\-on experience evaluating, selecting, training or adapting open\-source SLMs or LLMs, including benchmarking, governed dataset preparation, supervised or parameter\-efficient fine\-tuning and inference optimisation. * Experience designing model routing, batching and safe caching with appropriate keying, invalidation, freshness, privacy, access\-control and provenance safeguards. * Experience with unstructured or multimodal information, semantic retrieval, provenance and data\-quality engineering in workflows where domain experts provide ground truth and structured feedback. * Experience working directly with users or domain specialists to turn ambiguous needs into usable capabilities and iterate based on observed workflow outcomes. Our benefits 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 (opens in new window) on when and how to use AI during our hiring process so you can approach each step with confidence and showcase your best self. 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. Key Skills: Data Science, Python, Machine Learning Salary: Not disclosed