Software Engineer (Platform Engineering)

Job Description

About this role

Are you interested in building innovative technology that shapes the financial markets?

The Platform Engineering team architects and builds the fabric that underpins Aladdin, an operating system for investment managers that seeks to connect the information, people and technology needed to manage money in real time. We focus on defining a highly integrated data and tools strategy helping BlackRock lead the industry in using data and technology to drive decision making across our core asset management and technology businesses.

Your Team

he Critical Infrastructure team is part of the Platform Engineering and is responsible for evolving the strategic environment for Aladdin Applications, by designing and developing the core infrastructure layers of Aladdin including Data Layer, Aladdin Messaging Services, Aladdin Desktop Experience and the Aladdin API Gateway.

Your role and impact

The Aladdin Data Layer is BlackRock’s NoSQL data platform which provides easy access to different consistency models, security, provisioning models, scale and search. Built around core Apache Cassandra and Solr and made easily accessible to developers in core Java and C++. The data layer provides DevOps support including cluster discovery; simple schema definitions, release tooling, ETL, backup, metrics and visualization.

With your programming experience, knowledge of big data and passion in the domain, you will help us evolve the data layer with additions to the technology stack and maintain a top tier service for clients.

We are passionate about performance and innovation. From the top of the firm down, we embrace the diversity of values, identities and ideas brought forth by our employees and offer excellent flexibility to enhance work life balance.

Your responsibilities

• You will be designing, developing and helping to maintain distributed systems leveraging Apache Cassandra, Apache Solr and Apache Zookeeper
• Development and maintenance of libraries via which the wider development community at BlackRock use to access Distributed Platforms
• Implementing monitoring, scale, resilience, performance, security and troubleshooting solutions for Distributed Systems
• Work with the Operations teams to provide help in diagnostic situations

You Have

• A proven understanding of the JVM and its evolution since 1.8 with at least 3+ years of production experience.
• Knowledge of Dependency Injection frameworks, Guava, Apache Commons and other popular development libraries
• Strong functional programming and Object Orientated skills
• Build systems - Maven, Gradle Build Tool, Jenkins or similar
• Testing and Test automation experience - Cucumber, Behave or alternatives
• Excellent knowledge of Apache Cassandra and Apache Solr and its source code, its history since version 2, and its origins
• Experience with Clusters with a global footprint
• Data Migrations and Extraction
• Demonstrable experience working with coordination frameworks such as Zookeeper, Consul or etcd.
• The ability to design schemas, for OLAP with warehousing, for OLTP with normalization, and for NoSQL using the Chebotko method
• Good communications skills, proven track record of working well in a team both locally and globally
• Excellent practical knowledge of Clusters management for clusters of different types
• Configuration Management - Working with XML, JSON, YAML, and the management of properties files across large distributed platforms
• Messaging infrastructure such as Rabbit MQ (/IBM MQ or alternatives)
• Exposure to Public Cloud based data store solutions
• Microsoft Cosmos, Elasticsearch, Amazon Dynamo
• Passionate about critical thinking, delivery, innovation, and attention to detail
• Good base Unix and SQL skills

Useful skills

• gRPC, protobuff, Kafka, Azure, Spark, Hadoop

Want to learn more?

For 30 years, to drive innovation, BlackRock has bought great minds together. From the very beginning technology was leveraged for insight and efficiency to help our businesses better understand their client’s objectives. BlackRock is accelerating innovation and technology to invest even more in our Aladdin platform and looking for people with a passion for technology and a love of solving complex problems to join our teams.

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.

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 careers.blackrock.com | www.blackrock.com/corporate | Instagram: @blackrock | Twitter: @blackrock | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/blackrock

BlackRock is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status, and other statuses protected by law.