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 for 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.
Our Culture
Bridgewater’s unique success is the direct result of our unique way of being. We want an idea meritocracy in which meaningful work and meaningful relationships are pursued through radical truth and radical transparency. We require people to be extremely open, air disagreements, test each other’s logic, and view discovering mistakes and weaknesses as a good thing that leads to improvement and innovation. It is by continually striving together for the highest levels of truth and excellence that we create meaningful work and meaningful relationships. Within this culture, Diversity and Inclusion is a top priority because it is essential to finding the best talent in the world, enabling our idea meritocracy, and creating an environment where all types of people can thrive. We have a full-time team as well as affinity networks that work on these issues - If you would like to learn more, please let your Bridgewater recruiter know.
About the Research Department
Our mission is to understand how the world works - building and compounding our understanding of the timeless cause-and-effect relationships that move global economies and markets. With curiosity, cutting-edge technology, and deep sets of data, we build frameworks and analytical models that explain everything from long-term debt cycles to currency devaluations; and we use that compounded understanding to create the investment strategies that drive Bridgewater.
About the Sustainable Investing Team
In today’s world, environmental, social, and governance issues are driving macroeconomies, financial markets, and the actions of governments, corporate, consumers, and investors. Increasingly, institutional investors are also seeking to have an impact on the world through their portfolios, by explicitly directing capital toward sustainable entities or outcomes. These are rapidly evolving fields with significant conceptual, analytical and data challenges.
At Bridgewater, we are addressing both sustainable investing topics like we would approach any other challenge - as researchers and engineers - applying our fundamental, systematic, and diversified approach to sustainable investing to build a deep understanding of the most important sustainability issues affecting investors, and by creating investment solutions that are designed both to offer excellent financial returns and to achieve impact objectives. Bridgewater manages capital for some of the largest institutions in the world, and we partner with them to develop investment solutions, capabilities, and tools that are designed to shape their thinking on sustainable investing.
About Your Role
We are looking for someone who is eager to tackle these challenges with us. As a Research Associate (RA) on the Sustainable Investing team, you will help us build a world-class understanding of how sustainability (e.g. transition to a Net Zero world) intersects with economies and financial markets. You can expect to partner closely with our portfolio, client, and engineering teams, as well as our co-CIOs for Sustainability to build and shape our Sustainable Investing understanding and strategies. A successful RA in Sustainable Investing will be able to connect company-specific sustainability views with the broader macroeconomic environment, and translate that understanding into sustainability systems for our portfolios and insights for our clients.
You will drive the following responsibilities:
- Build systematic assets to improve our understanding of company, sovereign, and commodity sustainability
- Research a broad range of sustainability topics, such as climate transition, biodiversity, human rights, and more
- Conduct deep dives into specific companies or sectors and how they fit into the broader transition story
- Analyze the macroeconomic risks and impacts associated with the climate transition and related policies
- Communicate this understanding to internal and external stakeholders via research papers, dashboards, or slide decks
- Work closely with our portfolio, client, and engineering teams to build and market our sustainable strategies
- Generate independent ideas and help to drive the team’s research priorities
Minimum qualifications:
- 2+ years of prior work experience in an analytical field
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree from a competitive school with a strong academic and extracurricular track record
- Interest in and understanding of markets and investing, with particular affinity for sustainability
- Ability to prioritize and organize time effectively in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment, and learn about new topics quickly
- Strong work ethic and demonstrated ability to achieve results and drive projects to completion; strong attention to detail
- Ability to solve complex problems through analysis
- Effective written and oral communication skills
- Strong computer skills and Microsoft Office expertise; additional analytical capabilities ideal
In addition, to succeed within our unique culture and work environment, individuals must demonstrate humility, innate curiosity, and openness to new ideas and approaches. Candidates must be driven, confident, and goal-oriented. All Bridgewater employees are expected to be honest, exceptionally direct, and eager to provide and receive objective feedback. Our employees constantly strive for self-improvement through feedback and self-reflection and are committed to the pursuit of excellence.
You will be a click for this role if you:
- Have a desire to become an expert in the sustainable investing space
- Have a desire to expand ownership of projects and research topics
- Are analytical, highly logical, and structured in your thinking
- Are both assertive and open-minded, willing to assert your views while fully appreciating what you don’t know
- Hold a high degree of pride, personal responsibility, and ownership in the work that you own
- Are able to consistently step back and improve your way of operating and are open to receiving and giving quality feedback
- Thrive in an entrepreneurial, fast paced, ambiguous, open-ended team environment
Physical Requirements
Bridgewater offers remote flexibility for most of our roles, with most employees required to work from our Westport, CT office twice a week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
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.
You will grow with us by:
- Participating in formal and informal on the job training
- Developing a holistic understanding of portfolios, portfolio management principles, and the sustainable investing landscape
- RAs become well-versed in our investment approach, process, and strategies
Interested in learning more about working at Bridgewater? Hear about the experiences of our employees here.
Compensation Band:
- The expected annual base salary for this position is $125,000 - $225,000. The total compensation package includes variable compensation in the form of a discretionary target bonus.
Benefits:
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 including:
- Health insurance with 100% premium covered and access to additional concierge medical services
- 401(k) plan with generous employer match
- Paid time off, including fully paid parental leave and a competitive PTO package
- Workplace flexibility and access to back up childcare
- Financial assistance for family building support, including adoption and egg freezing
- Workplace wellness, including on-site gyms, free meals and healthy snacks, and meditation rooms
- An engaged and active community that includes many company events, affinity networks, and extracurricular interest groups
