Equity Quantitative Research Associate

About Bridgewater  

Bridgewater Associates is a premier asset management firm, focused on delivering unique insight and partnership for the most sophisticated global institutional investors.  

Our investment process is driven by a tireless pursuit to understand how the world’s markets and economies work — using cutting-edge technology to validate and execute on timeless and universal investment principles.  

Founded in 1975, we are a community of independent thinkers who share a commitment to excellence. By fostering a culture of openness, transparency, and inclusion, we strive to unlock the most complex questions in investment strategy, management, and corporate culture.  

Explore more information about Bridgewater on our website here.  

Our Culture  

Our culture is anchored in excellence, meaning constant improvement, and it is deeply tied to our mission. Because markets are objective, competitive, and getting smarter everyday, we need to keep rapidly improving to have any chance of beating them. Truth is our most essential tool for engaging with the markets and constantly improving because once you know what's true about your problems and opportunities, you can determine how to get better. Valuing truth means being transparent about your decision-making and mistakes, giving and receiving feedback with humility, and fighting for the best answers over hierarchy, ego, or self-interest. Operating this way is hard – it's only possible because we build meaning in our work and relationships. This meaning comes from the audacity of the mission, and the joy of working alongside people who make you a better version of yourself. The culture, like Bridgewater itself, is always evolving. In 1997 our founder Ray Dalio wrote down his lessons, starting with a Philosophy Statement which remains our foundation. This later evolved into a set of 300+ Principles. In 2022, when Ray transitioned the company, we re-underwrote several of those principles and evolved others, with a specific focus on Meritocracy. Today the culture sits, alongside our people, as our most important edge. When we get it right, it’s the engine that powers everything else. 

About the Team 

This role sits in our Asia Strategies department. The goal of Asia Strategies is to continue our growth down the journey of being the premier investment management firm in the region. This entails developing great investment strategies reflecting our expertise, generating alpha in the markets, researching and publishing our understanding of the macroeconomic environment, and designing solutions to help our clients invest across the region. 

About Your Role  

We are seeking a Quantitative Researcher to join a PM-led pod focused on systematic macro and long/short equity strategies in APAC. You will work alongside the PM in a tight knit and fast paced environment with consistent exposure to a Bridgewater CIO. Your primary focus will be on alpha research with responsibilities along all aspects of the process from idea generation to data discovery, research and analysis, testing, portfolio optimization, and implementation. 

You will drive the following responsibilities:  

• Research & Development - Drive a systematic research process end to end including idea generation, data modeling, research/analysis, implementation, and industrialization. 

• Oversight & Monitoring – Continuously evolve our systematic oversight processes to understand drivers of risk, return, and views. Generate ideas to improve existing signals. Contribute ideas for discretionary trades and overlays to the portfolio. 

• Discovery – Identify and assess new datasets to identify their merit in our investment process. Follow and look to implement the latest developments in academic research. Experiment with new technologies to improve both our investment process and research and development environment. 

• Collaboration – Work across our data engineers, developers, and researchers to evolve our research platform and data ecosystem. Engage with the broader Asia strategies team to share observations and generate ideas. 

Interested in learning more about working at Bridgewater? Hear about the experiences of our employees here. 

You will be a click for the role if you: 

• Have a passion for financial markets 

• Have a drive to understand the fundamental cause and effect linkages that drive markets, companies, and economies. 

• Are intellectually curious and creative 

• Are proactive with a strong sense of urgency, desire to drive impact, and are comfortable working in a fast-paced environment 

• Are relentless in their pursuit of learning and development 

• Are non-hierarchical, willing to challenge the status quo, and seek to give and receive feedback openly (even when challenging) 

• Are passionate about compounding understanding 

• Are experimental with a drive to adopt new technologies and methods 

Minimum Qualifications 

• 1-4 years of work experience in quantitative research at a hedge fund, asset manager, or bank. Experience in systematic equities a plus. 

• Strong mathematical and statistical modeling skills (both time series and cross-sectional analysis) 

• Demonstrated proficiency in statistical languages (Python or R) and experience with database programming languages and environments (SQL and Snowflake) 

• Willingness to expand your toolkit to adapt to our Scala driven production stack.   

• Strong desire to work with new development assistant technologies to drive productivity.   

• Experience working with large, diverse, and alternative datasets 

• Experience working with factor models (both externally sourced and internally developed) 

• Experience with trading in Asian markets is preferred including (but not limited to) familiarity with Asia market's distinctive characteristics such as stamp cost, financing, and no short constraints. 

Physical Requirements  

• The anticipated onsite requirement for this role is four days per week at our New York City campus or in our Singapore office. 

Why Choose Bridgewater? 

It takes all types to make Bridgewater great. We seek a diverse group of innovative thinkers and push them to engage in rigorous and thoughtful inquiry. We develop people through an honest examination of their abilities and performance, enabling personal growth and professional development. We strive to provide you opportunities that will challenge you and unlock your potential. 

Compensation 

• The expected annual base salary for this position is $250,000-$300,000. The total compensation package includes variable compensation in the form of a discretionary target bonus.  

One of our core priorities at Bridgewater is to enable our employees to build a great life and career, and we believe our benefits are an important extension of that philosophy. As such, currently Bridgewater offers a competitive suite of benefits. Explore more information about Bridgewater’s benefits on our website here. 

Bridgewater reserves the right to change its current benefits program at any time, in a manner that is consistent with applicable federal and state regulations.  

This job description is not a contract and confers no contractual rights, privileges, or benefits on any applicant or potential applicant. Bridgewater has the right to change any and all terms of this job description, including, but not limited to, job responsibilities, qualifications and benefits. Nothing in this job description constitutes an offer or guarantee of employment. Please note that we do provide immigration sponsorship for this position.  

Bridgewater Associates, LP is an Equal Opportunity Employer