Portfolio Risk Modeling, Model Governance - Associate

BlackRock is one of the world’s preeminent asset management firms, and they are seeking a hands-on Quantitative Associate to join the Portfolio Risk team within Aladdin Financial Engineering. This role focuses on quantitative research, model development, testing, and implementation, contributing to the team’s AI transformation journey.

Responsibilities

• Research, design, and back-test portfolio risk models using Python-based infrastructure
• Work hands-on with large and complex financial datasets, ensuring data quality and robustness of results
• Collaborate closely with software engineers to test, productionize, and maintain models
• Support existing models in production, including investigation and resolution of model-related questions from internal stakeholders and clients
• Develop and enhance testing, validation, back-testing, and quality-control frameworks
• Contribute to the team’s AI transformation journey, with a focus on applying AI, ML, and automation to model governance processes, such as: Model validation and back-testing
• Testing and quality control
• Documentation and reproducibility checks
• Research-to-production code migration
• Clearly document and communicate model assumptions, results, and limitations to both technical and non-technical audiences

Skills

• Master's degree (e.g., MFE) or PhD in a quantitative field such as Finance, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, or Engineering
• Strong hands-on programming experience, primarily in Python (R a plus)
• Experience working with large datasets and applying statistical, econometric, or quantitative techniques
• Solid understanding of financial markets, financial products, and basic economics
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with high attention to detail
• Clear written and verbal communication skills in English
• Ability to work effectively in a collaborative, team-oriented environment
• Critical thinking and intellectual curiosity
• Strong ownership of work and accountability for quality
• Ability to translate complex quantitative ideas into practical, usable solutions
• Comfort working across disciplines (quant research, engineering, risk, product)
• Interest in building robust, scalable, and well-governed analytical systems
• Innovative thinking balanced with sound judgment and practicality
• Exposure to machine learning and AI techniques, particularly as applied to financial or time-series data
• Experience applying AI, ML, or automation to model lifecycle and governance workflows, such as validation, back-testing, testing, monitoring, documentation, or code migration
• Knowledge of fixed income and/or equity risk factor models
• Understanding of portfolio theory and risk analytics
• Experience designing rigorous testing and back-testing frameworks
• Familiarity with building scalable and repeatable research or modeling processes
• Strong software engineering practices (clean, well-tested code)
• Experience with Unix/Linux and Git

Benefits

• Healthcare
• Leave benefits
• Retirement benefits
• Strong retirement plan
• Tuition reimbursement
• Support for working parents
• Flexible Time Off (FTO)

Company Overview

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