Junior quantitative researcher

What You’ll Do

• Portfolio Construction Research: You will research objective functions and constraints to effectively hedge risk and capture alpha, ensuring your models align with the production optimization stack (e.g., Barra, Axioma) being implemented by the team.
• Alpha Capture & Signal Aggregation: Support the design of the system’s "signal intake" by building models to ingest and score diverse alpha streams.
• Scaling & Sizing Logic: Engineer the position sizing that determine trade magnitude. You will build transfer functions that dynamically adjust position sizes based on volatility regimes, signal decay, and liquidity constraints, ensuring the system reacts intelligently to changing market conditions.
• Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA): Collaborate with the Senior Strat to close the feedback loop between execution and research. You will analyze execution data to model market impact in EM names, tuning the optimizer’s penalty terms to balance alpha capture against trading costs.
• Data Engineering & Quality Control: Take ownership of the data quality that feeds the central risk system. You will build robust pipelines using Python and SQL to clean and normalize large-scale structured and unstructured datasets, ensuring the production system runs on high-fidelity inputs.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience: 3–6 years of quantitative research experience at a hedge fund, bank, or proprietary trading firm.
• Education: A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a quantitative field (Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, or Engineering).
• Technical Stack: Exceptional proficiency in Python (pandas, numpy, scipy) and strong SQL skills for handling large financial datasets.
• Optimization Knowledge: Experience with portfolio construction and optimization libraries. Familiarity with commercial risk models/optimizers (Barra, Axioma).
• Analytical Mindset: A strong grasp of linear algebra and regression analysis, with the ability to apply these to "messy" real-world problems like illiquid EM securities.
• Collaborative Drive: A desire to work in a "greenfield" environment where you are building new capabilities rather than just maintaining old ones. You must be able to communicate complex research concepts to senior technical and business stakeholders.

Our Culture

The firm’s ethos is embedded in our people. ‘Talent is our strategy’ is our mantra and drives how we approach all initiatives at the firm. We believe our success is because of our people, so putting our talent above all else is our top priority.

Schonfeld strives to create an environment where our people can thrive. We foster a teamwork-oriented, collaborative environment where ideas at any level are encouraged and shared. The development and advancement of our talent is honed through interactions with each other, learning & educational offerings, and through opportunities to make impactful contributions.

At Schonfeld, we strive to cultivate a sense of belonging throughout all of our employees with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the forefront of this mission. As a firm we are committed to creating a hiring process which is not only fair, but also welcoming and supportive. On a daily basis, our employees welcome diversity across identity, thought, people and views which serves as the foundation of our culture and success. You can learn more about our DEI initiatives here - Belonging @ Schonfeld.

Who we are

Schonfeld Strategic Advisors is a multi-manager platform that invests its capital with Internal and Partner portfolio managers, primarily on an exclusive or semi-exclusive basis, across four trading strategies; quantitative, fundamental equity, tactical trading and discretionary macro & fixed income. We have created a unique structure to provide global portfolio managers with autonomy, flexibility and support to best enable them to maximize the value of their businesses.

Over the last 30 years, Schonfeld has successfully capitalized on inefficiencies and opportunities within the markets. We have developed and invested heavily in proprietary technology, infrastructure and risk analytics and continue to capitalize on new opportunities. In 2021 we launched our newest strategy, discretionary macro & fixed income as part of the continual growth of Schonfeld’s investible universe. Our portfolio exposure has expanded across the Americas, Europe and Asia as well as multiple asset classes and products.