Job Purpose:

  • The Head of Quantitative Research is responsible for the research, development, implementation, and monitoring of the firm’s Principles-Based Investing (“PBI”)indexes. In addition to developing new strategies and supporting new product development, the Head of Quantitative Research leads the firm’s quarterly and semi-annual index rebalances
  • The role also entails significant client support including reporting, performance attribution, and quarterly webinars.

Your Responsibilities:

Research

  • Develop, review, enhance, and oversee the implementation of systematic principles-based investment processes
  • Conduct empirical research to identify, measure, and forecast relationships between economic variables or investment attributes and market returns
  • Identify optimal ways to combine and weight investment signals
  • Employ optimization and portfolio construction techniques to best express principles in portfolios while managing risks and mitigating turnover and transaction costs
  • Build and enhance Vident’s proprietary strategy back-testing infrastructure
  • Guide (or sometimes support) new strategy and index development projects
  • Work with other research teams and members on research quality assurance
  • Review industry literature to keep abreast of the latest research developments in security selection, portfolio construction and optimization.

Portfolio Management

  • Lead and conduct semi-annual and quarterly portfolio rebalances. Download and import new market data and incorporate them into Vident’s index construction models
  • Conduct rebalances in careful alignment with the index methodologies
  • Present newly rebalanced portfolios to the Vident Index Policy Committee (VIPC) in clear and succinct fashion, alerting members to any risks or changes in portfolio attributes and constituents
  • Write code to enhance, streamline and automate rebalance processes
  • Conduct post-trade analysis to understand portfolio implementation costs and guide future portfolio implementation strategies
  • Collect, process, and distribute portfolio and benchmark data for quarterly fact sheets, webinars, investor packets, marketing presentations, and the Vident websites
  • Write code to automate and streamline data processing and calculations
  • Prepare market and investment performance commentaries
  • Develop, write, and maintain portfolio attribution programs to understand performance drivers and potential risk factors impacting portfolios
  • Conduct internal performance attributions on weekly, monthly, quarterly and as needed basis
  • Develop and integrate additional quantitative tools to innovate the research and monitoring processes

Client Relations & Marketing

  • Research, model, and forecast probability of success for the Vident funds and contrast with other public funds
  • Provide index performance attribution commentary for external advisors
  • Write investment blog materials as needed
  • Speak on quarterly conference calls and webinars regarding Vident indexes
  • Support the generation of fund-focused client marketing and webinar materials
  • Prepare Vident indexes rebalance commentary to share on the Vident websites
  • Support Vident Investment Advisors (VIA) and Business Development
  • Advise and support VIA portfolio managers related to Vident indexes implementation and rebalancing strategies
  • Advise on and/or assist with innovative external client index strategies
  • Participate in calls on potential new Vident business relationships and opportunities

Skills and Qualifications:

  • Expertise in empirical investment research and quantitative portfolio management
  • Experience with index management and development preferred
  • Proficient programmer in MATLAB
  • Experience with VBA, R and C-Based programming languages preferred
  • Expert Excel user and strong Microsoft Office skills
  • Experienced with Bloomberg and FactSet (both client and programming interfaces)
  • Experience with the Northfield optimizer and risk model or comparable platform preferred
  • 5-10 years experience
  • Master’s degree or higher in Financial Engineering preferred or comparable field
  • Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce, Business, Finance or Economics preferred or supporting fields such as Statistics, Econometrics, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics or STEM
  • Chartered Financial Analyst preferred.

Please forward applications to oliver@jobsinetfs.com

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