Credit Research, Associate / Vice President

About this role

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 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.

BlackRock’s Systematic Fixed Income (SFI) group manages more than $80 billion in global fixed income assets across ETFs, active long-only, alternative, and liability driven strategies. The platform offers fixed income investors one of the industry's broadest array of investment choices across security-selection and factor-based investment styles.

BlackRock’s SFI team is hiring a Quantitative Credit Researcher, who will focus on developing and supporting systematic active credit models and infrastructure across Long/Short and Long-Only strategies. The Researcher will partner with Portfolio Managers and other Researchers across US and European credit markets to generate high quality risk-adjusted alpha. The successful candidate will also partner with other investment teams outside of Systematic Credit on cross-platform initiatives that further expand our capacity and unlock new applications of our credit insights/strategies.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop, test, and refine systematic trading strategies for corporate bonds, credit default swaps (CDS), and other credit instruments.

• Conduct research on market inefficiencies, alpha signals and factor models in credit markets.

• Build predictive models for credit spreads, default probabilities, and liquidity risks.

• Analyze vast datasets, including bond prices, spreads, ratings, and macroeconomic indicators.

• Apply machine learning and/or statistical methods to identify trading opportunities.

• Work with structured and unstructured data, including fundamental and alternative datasets.

• Construct and evaluate risk models for credit portfolios.

• Design and optimize execution algorithms for trading corporate bonds and credit derivatives.

• Improve liquidity estimation techniques.

• Collaborate with PM and traders to enhance execution efficiency and minimize transaction costs.

• Develop and maintain quantitative libraries and infrastructure for research and production as part of SFI research platform.

• Optimize computational efficiency in large-scale simulations and data processing.

• Work closely with fellow researchers, traders, portfolio managers, and risk teams to translate research into actionable strategies.

• Present research findings to senior management and investment teams.

• Collaborate with technology teams to productionize models for daily trading.

• Continuously monitor credit markets, economic trends, and regulatory changes.

• Adapt models and strategies based on market conditions and real-time data.

• Stay up to date with academic research and industry best practices in credit quant strategies.

Knowledge/Experience:

• BA/BS required. Post-graduate degree and/or CFA a plus.

• Some experience conducting quantitative research, either in academic or professional capacities.

• Demonstrated ability building technology solutions related to portfolio management, trading and data analytics. Python/Git/SQL/Tableau skills strongly preferred.

• Ability to grasp quantitative concepts and its application to portfolio management.

• Strong communication and problem-solving skills with a sharp attention to detail. Comfortable multi-tasking in fast-paced environment and reacting to time-sensitive events.

For San Francisco, CA Only the salary range for this position is USD$162,000.00 - USD$215,000.00 . Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus, and benefits including heath care, 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.

Our benefits

To help you stay energized, engaged and inspired, we offer a wide range of benefits including a strong retire