Associate, Quantitative Research, Multi Asset

Description

About this role

About the Team:
BlackRock’s Multi-Asset Strategies & Solutions (MASS) group includes tactical asset allocation, income funds, target date, target risk, and impact investing products. Our team of over 300 multi-asset investment professionals manages a range of pooled vehicles, model portfolios, and customized mandates for a diversified client base. Currently, MASS has over $900 billion in assets under management and has a strong presence in San Francisco, New York, Princeton, London and throughout Asia Pacific.

BlackRock's Retirement Solutions Group team is currently one the most dynamic businesses and is recognized as an engine for future revenue growth. The group works with clients globally, providing deep expertise in retirement plans and solutions and an ability to deliver innovative retirement solutions to the global market. Today the primary commercial focus of the Retirement Solutions Group is our LifePath suite of target-date funds. The competitive advantages of the Retirement Solutions Group team at BlackRock lie in the depth and breadth of our product offerings to leverage the best of BlackRock’s active and passive investment platform, our unique capabilities in data, technology and analytics, and our innovative approach to research and systematic investing. The responsibilities of the team span portfolio management and research, product and investment strategy, thought leadership, and business development.

Position Overview

The Retirement Solutions team is seeking Researcher who will contribute to the management of BlackRock’s LifePath strategies across multiple markets, countries and/or asset classes. The Multi-Asset Strategies Researcher will focus on the research, development, and delivery of novel lifecycle investment solutions. The position of LifePath Researcher entails research on the areas of consumer behavior, spending patterns, optimal lifetime allocation, and fund design as well as competitive positioning, model portfolio building and automated allocation implementation. The duties will include obtaining and processing public and private data to support models that cover all of these areas, use of proprietary code written in Python-among other languages-to create new analyses for each of these areas, and development of new investment products.

This role requires strong analytical, quantitative and programming skills and ability to work and communicate in a global team spread across time-zones. Given the focus on multi-asset approaches among our clients and within BlackRock, this role has considerable scope for the right individual to have an impact on both the success of the team as well as the broader MASS and Retirement Solutions businesses

What you would be doing:

- Research existing offerings in the Retirement market.
- Employ rigorous quantitative methods to optimize design of existing and new products.
- Contribute, maintain and enhance our technology stack
- Develop and extend risk models for existing and new products using internal BlackRock platform
- Support externally-facing portfolio allocation tools

What you should have:

- Bachelor’s Degree or higher-level qualification and demonstrated record of academic achievement
- Understanding of optimization science
- Proven organizational and project management skills
- Technical skills and good knowledge of the Python programming language are essential. Proficiency or knowledge in numerical packages such as NumPy, Pandas strongly desired, as well as good understanding of object-oriented programming and coding best practices
- Excellent communication skills in writing and speech; capable of connecting with multiple audiences
- Effective problem-solving and analytical skills
- High level of self-motivation, ownership and initiative

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 current hybrid work model is designed to enable in-person connections and collaboration that is core to our culture, while supporting increased flexibility for all employees. In line with local health guidance and regulations, employees are required to work at least 3 days in the office each week, with the flexibility to work from home up to 2 days a week. Some business groups may require more time in the office due to their roles and responsibilities. The health, safety and well-being of our people will always be our top priorities; we will continue to monitor local conditions and health advisories in making decisions about our work environments.

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