Director, Workplace AI Portfolio Lead

About this role

The Workplace AI Portfolio Lead owns the enterprise portfolio strategy, prioritization, and value realization for AI-enabled workplace experiences and workflow automation. This role partners with the Head of Digital Workplace AI to help define the Workplace AI vision and translates it into a focused set of sequenced initiatives, ensuring engineering capacity is aligned to the highest impact outcomes. The scope spans platforms like M365 Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Copilot Studio agents, and workflow automation across Microsoft 365 and the Power Platform, with a focus on scalable employee experiences, reusable patterns, and measurable business impact. 
 
This leader is accountable for portfolio clarity and outcomes. They set the “what and why,” run the portfolio operating model, and ensure impact can be measured and communicated. They partner closely with Workplace AI Engineering, Workplace AI Operations, Adoption and Change Management, and Release and Transformation, as well as AI leaders across the firm. They help shape the Workplace AI North Star, including the target employee experience, priority scenarios, and the sequencing required to scale responsibly. 

Key Responsibilities 

Portfolio Strategy, Intake, and Prioritization 

• Own a single enterprise portfolio and backlog across Workplace AI initiatives (including M365 Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Copilot Studio agents, and automation), consolidating intake to reduce duplication and improve transparency. 

• Establish a standardized prioritization rubric that drives repeatable trade-offs across impact, scalability, reuse potential, readiness, risk, and effort. 

• Own and run portfolio decision forums. Lead quarterly planning and maintain a resourced roadmap (Now, Next, Later) aligned to actual engineering capacity and key dependencies. 

• Operate a clear “stop doing” and re-sequencing mechanism to protect capacity for priority initiatives and avoid perpetual pilots. 

Engineering Capacity Alignment and Execution Readiness  

• Build and maintain a capacity model that allocates effort across priority initiatives, reusable platform capabilities, reliability and technical debt, and time-boxed experimentation. 

• Partner with Workplace AI Engineering leadership to reduce parallel work, sequence dependencies, and improve throughput and time to impact. 

• Define stage gates from idea through scaled release (discovery, pilot, production, post-deployment) with clear readiness and exit criteria. 

• Ensure delivery plans account for constraints such as data readiness, integrations and connectors, identity and permissioning, security reviews, and release readiness. 

Vision and Product Strategy 

• Co-develop and maintain the Workplace AI vision and multi-horizon strategy (Now, Next, Later), in partnership with the Head of Digital Workplace AI and Digital Workplace AI Exco. 

• Translate the vision into a small set of enterprise scenario bets, with clear principles, guardrails, and sequencing that reflect real capacity and dependencies. 

• Own the portfolio narrative for Workplace AI, ensuring leadership and stakeholders understand what we are building, why it matters, and how it connects across tools. 

Experience Strategy and Scenario Focus 

• Translate the Workplace AI vision into an executable scenario blueprint and capability map that clarifies what will be standardized, reused, and bespoke. 

• Maintain a prioritized scenario library that defines target users, workflows, and expected outcomes for high-frequency moments that matter. 

• Drive coherence across Copilot, chat, agents, and automation so employees have a consistent path from question to action across channels. 

Value Realization, Measurement, and Executive Reporting 

• Define outcome metrics for priority scenarios (time saved, cycle time reduction, deflection, quality, user satisfaction, etc.) and ensure they are measurable and attributable. 

• Establish a measurement approach that combines telemetry and insights, user feedback, and business validation to quantify impact and inform portfolio decisions. 

• Build portfolio dashboards and executive-ready reporting that communicate what is live, what is scaling, what is next, and the value delivered. 

• Drive evidence-based decisions to iterate, scale, pause, or stop initiatives based on realized outcomes. 

• Lead post-release and post-scale retrospectives across priority initiatives, ensuring learnings translate into changes to roadmap, guardrails, and delivery process.  

Standards, Quality, and Responsible Scaling 

• Publish reusable agent and automation patterns with Workplace AI Operations to standardize escalation, logging, and safe operations. 

• Convert governance into practical guardrails with Risk, Legal, Privacy, and Security to move fast with controls. 

• Set AI experience quality standards with Workplace AI Engineering and Release & Transformation across accuracy, safety, and user acceptance. 

Stakeholder Alignment 

• Run a consistent operating cadence with Workplace AI leads to align priorities, manage dependencies, and resolve trade-offs quickly. 

• Partner with Adoption and Change Management to ensure targeted enablement plans exist for priority scenarios, with accountability for outcomes. 

• Serve as a key partner to the Head of Digital Workplace AI for vendor and platform engagement by translating roadmap signals into portfolio implications and product-level requirements. 

Qualifications 

• 10+ years of experience in product management, portfolio leadership, platform strategy, or enterprise transformation, including significant leadership experience in a cross-functional environment. 

• Demonstrated success prioritizing and delivering a portfolio under constrained capacity, including making and defending trade-offs with senior stakeholders. 

• Strong executive communication skills and the ability to build crisp narratives that connect vision, roadmap, and outcomes. 

• Technical fluency across modern productivity platforms and enterprise architecture concepts, including identity, permissions, data access patterns, and integration dependencies. 

• Strong analytical orientation with experience defining and tracking outcome metrics. 

• Experience delivering AI-enabled products or workflow automation in an enterprise environment. 

• Familiarity with productivity platforms, conversational experiences, and low-code automation tooling. 

• Experience translating vendor and platform roadmaps into internal investment decisions and scalable delivery plans. 

• Experience operating in regulated environments and partnering with risk and control functions. 

Core Competencies 

• Portfolio rigor and prioritization discipline 

• Systems thinking and structured problem solving 

• Outcome orientation and comfort with measurement 

• Cross-functional leadership and stakeholder influence 

• Ability to simplify complexity and drive decision-making 

For New York, NY Only the salary range for this position is USD$215,000.00 - USD$275,000.00 . Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus, and benefits including healthcare, leave benefits, and retirement benefits. BlackRock operates a pay-for-performance compensation philosophy and your total compensation may vary based on role, location, and firm, department and individual performance.

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.

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.

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

BlackRock is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity to all applicants and existing employees, and we evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, creed, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity/expression), sexual orientation, age, ancestry, physical or mental disability, marital status, political affiliation, religion, citizenship status, genetic information, veteran status, or any other basis protected under applicable federal, state, or local law. View the EEOC’s Know Your Rights poster and its supplement and the pay transparency statement.

 

BlackRock is committed to full inclusion of all qualified individuals and to providing reasonable accommodations or job modifications for individuals with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation/adjustments are needed throughout the employment process, please email [email protected]. All requests are treated in line with our privacy policy.

BlackRock will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in a manner consistent with the requirements of the law, including any applicable fair chance law.