The Area: Morningstar Indexes Team leverages its expertise in equity research, manager research, asset allocation, and portfolio construction to create innovative investment solutions. It uses Morningstar's intellectual property to create indexes that empower investors to achieve their goals at every stage of the investment process - market monitoring, benchmarking, and asset allocation. The unit offers a broad suite of global equity, bond, commodity and asset allocation indexes.

The Role: As a part of the Indexes New Product Development Team, you will participate in the full development cycle including ideation, design, development, presentations to global research team and clients, leading up to implementation. The ideal candidate will have a good grasp of investment concepts, possess strong analytical skills, good communication skills and will be technically proficient with at least one programming language (Python, R or MATLAB) in addition to SQL. The position will have a special focus on Strategic Beta (Factor) and ESG Indexes, and candidates with hands-on experience with such investment strategies will have an advantage. This position is based in our Chicago office.

Responsibilities:

The successful candidate will

• Collaborate effectively with Morningstar research organization including equity, quantitative, manager or sustainability research teams, and product management to develop novel thematic and smart beta indexes that leverage Morningstar IP
• Work on the entire product development lifecycle from ideation, design, development, and validation, leading up to launch
• Work closely with other index teams to operationalize index methodologies
• Develop new tools and capabilities to perform portfolio construction or analytics independently, including the use of statistical and machine learning techniques
• Publish white papers, factsheets, client presentations, and other collateral to support go-to-market plans

Requirements:

• At least 3 years of experience in a quantitative or financial domain such as equity research, credit research, investment management, risk management, or analytics
• Bachelors degree in a quantitative, financial discipline, or engineering
• MBA/Masters degree from a premier institute
• CFA charter or candidature (at least passed Level II) is preferred
• Knowledge of institutional investing, modern portfolio theory, and portfolio construction processes
• Proficiency in at least one programming language (Python, Matlab, R or C#)
• Excellent documentation habits, oral and written communication and presentation skills including ability to distil complex ideas into simple explanations
• A commitment to the highest ethical standards and to act with professionalism and integrity