Context

During my time at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, I worked as a Front-End Developer on Risk Radar, a risk management application within Aladdin — BlackRock’s enterprise investment platform used by 100+ global financial institutions.
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Risk Radar supports exception-based risk governance, helping risk managers monitor risk through customisable rule sets, track exceptions, and make informed decisions. Users can define rules to monitor specific risk or return indicators, subscribe portfolios, and manage exceptions by accepting, escalating, or flagging them as false positives.
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The system also provides auditability by capturing all elements of risk evaluation and decision-making over time, ensuring transparency and compliance. My role involved translating design specifications into high-quality, user-centred interfaces while working closely with a cross-functional team to ensure the product remained both functional and reliable.

My Role

As a Front-End Developer, I worked primarily with TypeScript and Angular to develop the front-end features of the application. My responsibilities included:

Maintaining Quality and Performance at Scale
I was part of a team that prioritized quality and scalability. Through rigorous code reviews, comprehensive unit testing, and consistent adherence to best practices, we ensured a robust front-end architecture that minimized bugs and support overhead. Given the global scale of users and the critical nature of financial workflows, we designed components with performance and maintainability in mind, contributing to a smoother and more reliable user experience across the platform.

Cross-Functional Collaboration
I regularly worked with Product Managers to gather user requirements, plan feature releases, and ensure timely delivery of business-critical functionality. This iterative collaboration enabled us to align closely with end-user needs and deliver impactful updates at speed.

Working with Design Systems
Although we often handled initial feature design independently, we collaborated with UX Designers for more complex workflows. We leveraged the Aladdin Design System to ensure visual and interaction consistency across the platform. I also contributed to design system scalability by raising edge-case issues, proposing refinements, and validating component behaviour across use cases.

Agile Delivery & Quality Assurance

Our team followed Agile methodologies with a strong focus on quality and collaboration. I actively participated in all key ceremonies including daily stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives, and sprint reviews with client demos. I was also involved in backlog grooming, assigning story points, and planning releases, which gave me visibility and ownership across the development cycle.
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What stood out about our workflow was the shared responsibility culture — every team member was involved in decision-making, planning, and delivery. We emphasized doing things properly from the start: thorough code reviews, high test coverage, and collaborative problem-solving were all part of our day-to-day. No pull request ever went unreviewed, and feedback was expected and welcomed. This approach resulted in very few bugs or support issues and a consistently stable application.
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We had a thoughtful, three-wave release strategy that helped us maintain quality at scale. Features were first tested in our internal environment, then released to BlackRock production clients, and finally rolled out to external enterprise clients. Completed features were always validated and signed off by product managers ahead of each release, which helped us catch edge cases and ensure user needs were fully met. This methodical process significantly reduced surprises during deployments and ensured we were delivering a polished experience every time.

Results & Impact

We received positive feedback from internal and external clients and low number of support issues stood out as key indicators of the project’s success. The commitment to high standards, meticulous testing, and team collaboration played a significant role in delivering a reliable and user-friendly product. By focusing on quality from the beginning, we were able to reduce post-release issues and maintain a seamless experience for users.

Final Thoughts

This role affirmed the importance of collaboration and quality in software development. Agile processes like daily stand-ups and sprint reviews kept the team aligned and allowed us to address blockers early. Our three-wave release system was especially effective in ensuring that every feature met our high standards before reaching clients.
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It also taught me a lot about what it takes to build and maintain a product at scale—from thoughtful planning and testing practices to consistent design systems and stakeholder alignment. Every decision had to account not just for today’s users, but for long-term maintainability and reliability across a diverse client base.

One of the most valuable lessons I took away was the impact of a non-blaming, collaborative culture. It encouraged shared ownership of both successes and setbacks, which created an environment where high standards were the norm and everyone was deeply invested in the product’s success.