BlackRock

BlackRock · VP of UX Design · Jan 2022 – Jan 2026 · San Francisco

I ran design for Advisor Center, BlackRock’s digital platform for the US financial advisors who sell and service BlackRock and iShares products. The users are people who are legally on the hook for what they act on, working in dense, regulated information, so every design decision was a trust decision first.

What I owned. The product design of the platform end to end, the design team that shipped it, and the design systems underneath it across BlackRock and iShares. I was hands-on: flows, interaction detail, prototypes, specs, and the reviews with engineering through implementation, alongside running the team.

The agentic work. From 2023 the platform started acting on the advisor’s behalf: surfacing what to do next, preparing materials, answering questions against BlackRock’s own research and product data. I defined those use cases with the business rather than after it, and designed what the advisor sees while the system is working, how confidence and sources are shown, how the system says it doesn’t know, and where a human takes over. Several of those interaction models became patent filings.

How the team shipped. The last two years we worked AI-native: Figma Make, agent-assisted componentization of the design system, prototypes in hours instead of weeks. Discovery to engineering handoff got measurably faster and the quality bar went up, not down.

The numbers. On the properties the team owned: page views up 15–20% year over year, unique visitors up 10–13%, NPS up 30%. The firm gave the work the Charles S. Hallac Award in 2023 (judged company-wide) and a marketing design innovation award in 2022.

The detailed case study, with screens, is behind a password because the material is BlackRock’s, not mine. If you’re evaluating me for a role, email sean@seanrosscreative.com and I’ll walk you through it on a call, or send you the password.