Job Specifications
Role Overview
The Associate – Public Markets will support the Head of Public Markets in the design, implementation, and continuous enhancement of the public markets asset allocation and portfolio construction framework. The role spans global equities, fixed income, commodities, and liquid alternatives, combining active and passive strategies. The Associate will also contribute to external manager selection, portfolio analytics, and governance reporting.
This is a quantitatively oriented role requiring strong analytical capability, sound investment judgment, and the ability to translate complex analysis into clear, actionable insights for senior stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities
1. Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA)
Build, maintain, and periodically update capital market assumptions (expected returns, volatilities, correlations, tail risks) across public asset classes.
Design and run SAA studies using optimization, scenario analysis, and stress testing to propose long-term benchmark allocations.
Translate investment beliefs and constraints (risk budget, drawdown tolerance, liquidity, regulatory considerations) into portfolio construction rules and policy benchmarks.
Prepare SAA materials for governance forums, clearly documenting methodology, assumptions, and risk/return implications.
2. Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA) & Macro Research
Develop TAA frameworks using macroeconomic, valuation, sentiment, and technical indicators across equities, rates, credit, FX, and commodities.
Produce regular macro and market outlooks with base, upside, and downside scenarios, and convert them into actionable portfolio tilts.
Back-test and calibrate TAA strategies; assess hit ratios, information ratios, and refine models over time.
Implement TAA views through ETFs, derivatives, overlays, or manager-level tilts within defined risk and liquidity limits.
3. Portfolio Construction & Risk Analytics
Design and apply portfolio construction techniques including mean-variance, risk parity, factor-based, and scenario-based approaches.
Decompose portfolios into systematic risk drivers (equity beta, duration, credit, FX, style factors) and monitor risk budgets.
Perform ex-ante and ex-post risk and performance attribution across asset classes, strategies, and managers.
Develop frameworks for integrating liquid alternatives (long/short, macro, risk premia) as diversifiers, hedges, or return enhancers.
4. Implementation, Rebalancing & Overlays
Contribute to defining rebalancing rules and assess their impact on transaction costs, tracking error, and liquidity.
Support portfolio rebalancing across ETFs, funds, and external managers; generate trade lists and coordinate execution.
Design and monitor derivative overlays (equity, rates, FX, volatility, tail-risk hedges).
Track implementation shortfall versus policy benchmarks and propose corrective actions.
5. Data, Models & Tools
Build and maintain analytics infrastructure including risk systems, optimizers, databases, and dashboards in collaboration with technology and operations teams.
Validate, document, and periodically review models and assumptions; conduct sensitivity and model-risk assessments.
Automate recurring analytics and reporting (SAA/TAA dashboards, risk and performance reports) and streamline data pipelines.
6. Governance, Reporting & Stakeholder Engagement
Prepare high-quality analytics and presentations for senior investment forums, including scenario analysis and allocation recommendations.
Draft and maintain investment policies, benchmark definitions, and portfolio guidelines for public markets.
Work closely with risk, legal, compliance, tax, finance, and technology teams on ad-hoc analyses and decision support.
Provide training and guidance to investment team members on asset allocation tools and best practices.
Essential Qualifications & Competencies
Advanced degree or professional qualification (CFA or equivalent) in finance, economics, or a related field.
2–4 years of experience in public markets investing, portfolio analytics, or asset allocation (e.g., asset manager, sovereign entity, family office).
Strong expertise in SAA/TAA, capital market assumptions, diversification, factor investing, and portfolio optimization.
Experience with risk and attribution systems (e.g., Barra, Axioma, RiskMetrics) and market data platforms (Bloomberg, Datastream).
Strong programming and data skills (Python or R, SQL, Excel/VBA).
Structured problem-solving ability and sound investment judgment.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to distill complex analysis for senior audiences.
High integrity, strong governance mindset, and attention to detail.
Self-starter with resilience and the ability to manage multiple priorities under tight deadlines.
Desirable
Strong understanding of global macroeconomics, interest rates, credit cycles, and public market instruments.
Advanced quantitative skills in statistics, econometrics, factor modeling, and tim