Ares’ Alternative Credit (“Alt Credit”) strategy targets various types of asset-focused investments where diversified pools of assets (rather than corporate earnings) generate the cash flows upon which the team’s investments are based. Alt Credit invests across a spectrum of liquid and illiquid opportunities that include various specialty finance sectors, net leases, structured products, cash flow streams (e.g. royalties, licensing, management fees), and other asset types. The Alt Credit team today comprises over 40 investment professionals located primarily in three Ares offices: New York City, Atlanta and London.
Ares is currently seeking a Quantitative Developer to add to the Alt Credit team, working in New York City. The role is designed to develop and support the quantitative systems within the Alternative Credit team – including, but not limited to systems development, reporting, financial modelling and quantitate analysis. The qualified candidate will have a deep understanding of and skillset reflecting advanced financial modeling, programming, and database skills preferably with experience related to securitizations and data analytics. Away from systems development, the candidate will sit on the trading desk in a dynamic investing environment and will be expected to provide frequent ad-hoc queries and analyses.
Primary functions and responsibilities:
The Alt Credit team is one of the most technical and quantitative investment groups within Ares. The team has built state-of-the-art investment analytic systems which are integrated into everyday investing and decision making. The role, as a part of a team, is to design and create towards continuing the evolution of these systems. The ideal candidate will have a strong technical background and will be interested in understanding capital markets and structured investments.
Specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Lead the development of investment models to run and track risk scenarios
- Develop and maintain a data warehouse of relevant market data, including an ETL layer for 3rd party data.
- Leverage existing Ares technology, infrastructure, and quantitative research to ensure we are implementing best practices and the latest technology
- The scope of modeling covers:
- Working directly with investment teams to understand investments and to come up with risk scenarios
- Coding up tools and models, relying on existing tools for certain asset classes, such as the Intex API
- Optimizing inputs, outputs, processes, and data structures
- Developing analytics and reports on outputs to measure risks and performance
- Understanding and presenting the output to colleagues and 3rd parties to make better investment decisions
- Develop and support custom investment and fund reporting to both internal (investment team, portfolio management, strategy) and external (investors, marketing) consumers
- Ensure that models, reports, and data are accurate and relevant.
- Contribute to various team projects to further strengthen and enhance our investment process, team, and culture.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree required. Superior academic achievement at a top tier undergraduate program in Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related field
- Sophisticated modeling, analytical, and design capabilities
- 3-5 years of relevant work experience. Asset-backed structuring experience or knowledge of fixed income analytics is beneficial
- Programming and database experience is a must, with a preference towards finance.
- Exposure to working with SQL, MS Excel, Python, VBA, and Intex is preferred.
- Experience with Power BI and developing within the Microsoft ecosystem (visual studio & azure) is a plus
- Ability to reduce complex problems to their key drivers. Ability to combine, understand, and explain disparate datasets and assumptions
- Ability to collaborate in a dynamic team environment, and with senior professionals
- Very strong verbal and written communication skills