Private Asset Market Risk Modeler, Vice President, Aladdin Financial Engineering

BlackRock is one of the world’s preeminent asset management firms and a premier provider of global investment management, risk management and advisory services to institutional, intermediary, and individual investors around the world. BlackRock’s mission is to create a better financial future for our clients. We have a responsibility to be the voice of the investor, and we represent each client fairly and equally. Constant communication with a diverse team of partners strengthens us and delivers better results for our clients. Continuous innovation helps us bring the best of BlackRock to our clients. BlackRock offers a range of solutions — from rigorous fundamental and quantitative active management approaches aimed at maximizing outperformance to highly efficient indexing strategies designed to gain broad exposure to the world’s capital markets. Our clients can access our investment solutions through a variety of product structures, including individual and institutional separate accounts, mutual funds and other pooled investment vehicles, and the industry-leading iShares® ETFs.

About Aladdin Financial Engineering (AFE):

Join a diverse and collaborative team of over 400 modelers and technologists in Aladdin Financial Engineering (AFE) within BlackRock Solutions, the business responsible for the research and development of Aladdin’s financial models. This group is also accountable for analytics production, enhancing the infrastructure platform, and delivering analytics content to portfolio and risk management professionals (both within BlackRock and across the Aladdin client community). The models developed and supported by AFE span a wide array of financial products covering equities, fixed income, commodities, derivatives, and private markets. AFE provides investment insights that range from an analysis of cash flows on a single bond, to the overall financial risk associated with an entire portfolio, balance sheet, or enterprise.

Role Overview:

We are looking to hire a senior quant modeler (VP) to join our Private Asset Market Risk Modeling team to drive the development of risk factor models and portfolio analytics for private market investments. The Private Asset Market Risk team builds a range of models, including private equity, real estate, credit, infrastructure, and hedge funds, with sophisticated econometric/statistical methods and tools. These models have real practical value and have a very large footprint of usage across the entire Aladdin client base including portfolio managers, risk managers, and allocators and influence investment activity. As a result, we place special emphasis on developing models that scale with our growing Analytics’ business and ensuring adherence to BlackRock’s rigorous standards of model governance.

This individual would have a strong background in quantitative research, have demonstrable project management skills as well as proven experience to work in a team environment as well as collaborating with senior modelers from other groups/regions. This person is expected to join as an individual contributing to the design and development of our private market risk models, particularly in the private credit (i.e., real estate debt, infrastructure debt) space.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop private asset risk factor models and backtest, document, and guide new models and methodologies through validation.

• Collaborate with partner teams on model productionization

• Build and maintain model governance controls, including (but not limited to) model performance monitoring, model documentation, model remediations and supporting internal & external client model validations

• Communicate (verbally and in writing) with internal stakeholders and external clients on the design, backtesting, and usage of the models. Discuss model performance regularly, investigate exceptional model performance, diagnose issues and conduct corrective remediations

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in quantitative field / statistical modeling. Experience with one or more of the following is preferred: risk factor models and analytics, fixed income analytics, applications of ML/AI techniques. 

• Master’s or PhD degree in a quantitative discipline or one that relates to application of quantitative techniques in finance (financial engineering, math finance, etc.). Master’s degree with 5+ years or PhD degree with 3+ years of experience.

• A strong background in data-driven quantitative research, econometrics, and empirical asset pricing.

• Hands-on experience with statistical modeling through software (e.g., Python, R) and strong background in programming.  Proficiency with Python is required.

• Experience with data handling (ETL, data joining with SQL, cleaning, processing, summarizing, descriptive analysis), and building and back-testing statistical and econometric models.

• Knowledge of private assets, investments, and portfolio management is preferred.

• Experience with any version control system (e.g., git) is strongly preferred.

• Prior work experience in financial modeling (e.g., risk models, analytics, pricing/valuation models) or data science and model deployment to production environment is a plus.

• Resourcefulness and strong problem-solving skills even in the face of constraints, limited options, or uncertainties.

• Ability to work effectively with a team of highly motivated individuals.

• Time and project management skills.

• Proven track record of guiding junior talent.

• Positive attitude and ability to work both independently and as a part of a global team in a fast-paced environment.

• Excellent communication and presentation skills.

For New York, NY Only the salary range for this position is USD$170,000.00 - USD$225,000.00 . Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus, and benefits including healthcare, leave benefits, and retirement benefits. BlackRock operates a pay-for-performance compensation philosophy and your total compensation may vary based on role, location, and firm, department and individual performance.

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.

BlackRock’s hybrid work model is designed to enable a culture of collaboration and apprenticeship that enriches the experience of our employees, while supporting flexibility for all. Employees are currently required to work at least 4 days in the office per week, with the flexibility to work from home 1 day a week. Some business groups may require more time in the office due to their roles and responsibilities. We remain focused on increasing the impactful moments that arise when we work together in person – aligned with our commitment to performance and innovation. As a new joiner, you can count on this hybrid model to accelerate your learning and onboarding experience here at BlackRock.