Vice President, AI Credit Product Lead

Ares is seeking a Vice President, AI Credit Product to define and lead the AI product strategy supporting the firm's global Credit investment platform. 

This leader will partner closely with Credit investment professionals, Engineering, Data & AI, Operations, and Infrastructure teams to identify, prioritize, and deliver AI-powered products and capabilities that enhance investment decision-making, streamline investment workflows, and transform how investment teams source, evaluate, execute, and monitor investments. 

The role spans the end-to-end Credit investment lifecycle—including deal sourcing, deal screening, underwriting, diligence, investment committee, trade execution, portfolio management, portfolio monitoring, and investment analytics—and is responsible for embedding AI across the firm's investment operating model. 

Reporting to the Managing Director, Head of Credit Product, this leader will serve as the primary Product partner to the Enterprise Data & AI organization, translating emerging AI capabilities into scalable products that create measurable business value across Direct Lending, Alternative Credit, Opportunistic Credit and Liquid Credit strategies. 

The successful candidate will combine strong product leadership, investment technology expertise, and a deep understanding of modern AI capabilities. This individual will shape Ares' AI product vision for Credit while driving AI adoption across investment workflows and fostering AI-native ways of working throughout the Credit Product organization. 

This role requires a hands-on product leader who is equally comfortable defining long-term product strategy and rapidly prototyping new ideas using modern AI-enabled product development tools. The ideal candidate enjoys experimenting with emerging technologies, validating concepts with users, and partnering closely with Engineering to bring innovative products to market. 

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS & RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Strong understanding of private credit investment workflows spanning deal sourcing, deal screening, underwriting, diligence, investment committee, trade execution, portfolio management, portfolio monitoring, and investment analytics.  

• Strong understanding of modern AI capabilities, including Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI assistants and copilots, agentic AI, intelligent workflow automation, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), enterprise search, and enterprise AI platforms.  

• Experience identifying, defining, and delivering AI-powered products that leverage enterprise knowledge, document intelligence, workflow automation, or intelligent decision support to improve business outcomes.  

• Experience partnering closely with Engineering, Data Science, and Enterprise Data & AI organizations to define product strategy and deliver enterprise AI capabilities.  

• Familiarity with prompt engineering, tool/function calling, semantic search, vector databases, AI evaluation, human-in-the-loop workflows, context management, and responsible AI governance.  

• Demonstrated hands-on experience using modern AI-assisted product development, rapid prototyping, design, or low-code/no-code tools to rapidly validate ideas and communicate product concepts.  ​

• Strong product strategy, roadmap development, product discovery, stakeholder management, and product lifecycle management skills with the ability to translate complex business workflows into scalable technology solutions.  

• Excellent communication, executive presentation, and cross-functional leadership skills with the ability to influence senior business and technology stakeholders. 

General Requirements:

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