Vice President - Intellectual Property Counsel

Your responsibilities

• Helping to drive and develop BlackRock s patent strategy based on the company s strategic goals and competitive position.
• Working closely with BlackRock s engineers and product teams to identify and harvest inventions capable of IP protection, and working with external counsel and other service providers to file, prosecute, and maintain patents.
• Cultivating an IP-aware culture by counseling and educating internal partners on intellectual property issues, including patents, trade secrets, clean room development, and open source software licensing issues.
• Working with external counsel to analyze and respond to third-party patent demands and licensing opportunities.
• Conducting freedom-to-operate analyses to assess potential patent risks associated with product development and commercialization, including patent landscape analyses, evaluating claim scope and validity, and advising on risk mitigation strategies.
• Actively contributing to BlackRock s overall IP strategy, including by refining our patent and trade secret-related policies and procedures.
• Staying abreast of and communicating patent and trade secret legal developments that could impact BlackRock s business.
• Advising on IP aspects of commercial agreements, including joint development agreements and technology transfers.
• Working cross-functionally with security and engineering teams to advise on open source software and open source AI/LLM use, licensing, and compliance strategies, including developing efficient processes to enable compliant open source use in BlackRock s products at scale.
• Providing clean room development guidance to ensure the protection and integrity of BlackRock products, including establishing protocols and conducting reviews to prevent unauthorized use of third-party IP.

You have

• At least 7 to 10 years of patent prosecution experience in a top-tier law firm or in-house legal department.
• Admission to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Bar and membership in good standing in at least one U.S. state bar.
• Experience in strategically building patent portfolios, including harvesting inventions, counseling engineers and business teams, and prosecuting patents.
• Degree or equivalent experience in a technical field, preferably in Engineering, Computer Science, or Computer Engineering.
• Experience in fintech, AI, machine learning, data processing, and/or software patents.
• Strong knowledge of open source licenses and related legal issues.
• Experience in the asset management industry or related financial industry is a plus, though not required.
• Ability to work across time zones to support BlackRock innovators globally, including around 25% of working hours for meetings with US-based inventors and US-based external counsel.
• Initiative, attention to detail, and a collaborative working style.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, including the ability to effectively and concisely communicate complex legal issues to a non-legal audience orally and in writing, and to be a dedicated business partner to internal stakeholders.
• Strong organizational skills and an ability to manage multiple competing, and often evolving, priorities and deadlines.