Location

Charleston - 997 Morrison Drive, Suite 402

Job Description

Position Summary

The Director of Investment Research is responsible for independently scoping, executing, and delivering investment-grade research that translates complex demographic, macroeconomic, and market data into specific, actionable capital deployment opportunities. This research forms the foundation for the analytics and decision-support tools that enable the organization to make faster, smarter, and more informed decisions, primarily supporting investment decisions but also operational workflows. This role defines the requirements for those tools and partners with data science and engineering colleagues to bring them to life. The role will partner closely with Investments, Asset Management, Finance, Revenue Management, and Executive Leadership, in particular the CEO and CIO of Maymont.

The ideal candidate combines strong quantitative and research capability with financial and strategic thinking. This individual is equally comfortable making sense of complex and ambiguous data, analyzing investment opportunities, evaluating housing markets, applying mid-level econometrics, and presenting crisp analytical insights to executive leadership. They are technically fluent enough to collaborate credibly with data science and engineering teams and to program-manage analytical work without needing to serve as the engineering lead. Success in this role requires curiosity, business acumen, and the ability to transform complex data into actionable investment recommendations.

More specifically, the candidate has the intellectual range to receive a thesis-level research question, such as "where should we be investing given the silver tsunami demographic shift?" and return within roughly two weeks with substantial progress on that question, potentially a geospatial analysis, an emerging investment thesis, and/or a recommended MVP approach, delivered as a decision-ready briefing. Once the approach is reviewed and approved by leadership, this person would advance it further by prototyping in AI-assisted tools such as Claude Code and then scope and build alongside our data science and engineering teams.

Essential Job Functions

• Own a self-managed research roadmap driven by senior executive priorities, conducting independent deep-dive research sprints (typically 1-3 weeks) that deliver investment-grade analysis spanning full U.S. Housing platform: single-family rental, build-to-rent, senior housing, affordable housing, manufactured housing, and market-rate multifamily.
• Define the requirements for dynamic tools within our proprietary analytics application, for example, specifying how a geospatial demographic analysis should become an interactive heat map that enables platform-level investment decisions, and partner with the data science and engineering teams that build them. Set the standard for what good looks like and program-manage the effort to delivery.
• Build working MVPs and prototypes-leveraging AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code and working proficiency in Python-that validate an approach and can be handed off to the engineering team to harden and productionize.
• Analyze housing market trends, demographic shifts, competitive positioning, and macroeconomic factors impacting investment performance.
• Respond to ad hoc analytical requests from leadership with fast, rigorous turnarounds. For example, identifying markets / areas that should out-perform by identifying demographic shifts to product types, and then packaging the findings into succinct, actionable, decision-ready output.
• Translate complex analytical findings into concise recommendations for executive leadership and investment teams.
• Partner with Data Engineering to ensure the analytical datasets the role relies on are reliable and trusted.
• Evaluate emerging techniques and external data sources to continuously improve the organization's analytical capabilities and the quality of its investment research.
• Perform other duties as assigned to support business objectives

Performance Expectations & Key Metrics:

• Decision Support: Develop analytical frameworks that improve market analysis, portfolio optimization, and overall investment performance.
• Strategic Analysis: Identify emerging opportunities and risks through advanced analytics, econometrics, and quantitative research.
• Research Impact: Deliver platform-spanning investment research that directly informs capital deployment decisions measured by speed of thesis-to-recommendation cycle (target: 2 weeks for a defined research question), quality of cross-platform opportunity identification, and the degree to which research outputs inform funded investments and approved decisions.
• Analytical Innovation: Leverage AI and emerging tools to accelerate research, sharpen analytical rigor, and improve organizational efficiency.
• Data Quality & Analytical Standards: Ensure analytical rigor, statistical integrity, reproducibility, and documentation across all research and analyses.

Required Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's or master's degree in Data Science, Statistics, Economics, Finance, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field.

Experience

• Minimum of 6-8 years of experience in quantitative research, investment analytics, or applied economic/market analysis, with demonstrated investment-side experience (investment committee exposure, memo writing, or capital deployment decisions preferred).

Skills & Competencies

• Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
• Demonstrated ability to influence strategic business decisions through analytical insights.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and presentation skills with both technical and executive stakeholders.
• Quantitative & Statistical Analysis: Strong command of statistical modeling, econometrics, forecasting, regression, clustering, and predictive analytics, with a working understanding of the model development lifecycle sufficient to scope and evaluate the work of technical teams.
• Investment & Financial Analysis: Experience evaluating investment opportunities through quantitative analysis, financial modeling, forecasting, scenario analysis, and portfolio performance measurement.
• Real Estate Analytics: Experience analyzing housing markets, rental pricing, acquisition underwriting, portfolio optimization, demographic trends, geospatial data, competitive intelligence, and macroeconomic indicators affecting residential real estate investments.
• Data Fluency: Working proficiency in SQL and Python for data analysis (e.g., pandas), sufficient to independently explore data and analyses and to communicate precisely with the data science and engineering teams.
• Artificial Intelligence: Experience leveraging Generative AI and modern AI tools to accelerate research, generate market intelligence, and improve analytical efficiency.
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to frame ambiguous business problems, develop analytical approaches, and translate findings into strategic recommendations.
• Communication: Ability to distill complex analysis into succinct, decision-ready briefings and slides for technical and non-technical audiences, including executive leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree or PhD in Data Science, Statistics, Economics, Finance, Operations Research, or MBA with a quantitative focus.
• Experience within real estate, private equity, investment management, asset management, or financial services.
• Experience developing predictive pricing, forecasting, or optimization analyses, and working with technical teams to put them to use.
• Experience utilizing geospatial analytics and external market data sources.
• Familiarity with modern AI platforms and cloud-based analytics environments.

Outstanding Benefits - Backed by Brookfield, our benefits include a 5% 401(k) match, wellness credits that reduce healthcare costs, and up to 160 hours of PTO annually for full-time employees.

Career Growth - With continued expansion planned for Maymont, you'll find meaningful opportunities to grow your skills, advance your career, and make an impact.

Strong Foundation - As part of Brookfield Asset Management, one of the world's largest real estate asset managers, we have the stability, resources, and vision to keep growing.