Senior Associate, Portfolio Construction & Implementation Strategy Position OverviewReporting to the Director of Portfolio Construction and Implementation Strategy, the Senior Associate is a member of the implementation strategy team and supports the firm's efforts to translate research views into client portfolios with maximum fidelity. The role is hands-on, data-driven, and quantitative: the Senior Associate will focus on improving monetization across the firm's product suite through portfolio construction, optimization, rebalancing, and trade execution. The successful candidate will meaningfully contribute to the team from day one.
The Senior Associate will collaborate cross-functionally with Portfolio Management, Portfolio Implementation, Research, and Trading on firm-wide initiatives that improve risk-adjusted returns net of all costs. The role is a high-impact seat with direct exposure to senior investment leadership and offers the opportunity to develop deep expertise in portfolio construction, optimization, and implementation at a systematic investment manager.
Key Job Responsibilities- Deliver high-impact research across portfolio construction, implementation, and optimization.
- Improve our machinery for translating stock characteristics into portfolios
- Improve our portfolio optimization process, including proposing and evaluating new objective functions and optimization frameworks
- Work with software engineers to build and extend tooling around the firm's optimization engine and related infrastructure.
- Evaluate and reduce frictions between the rebalancing process and trading.
- Analyze market structure and liquidity to model and control trading costs, enhancing execution efficiency.
- Contribute to new product design.
Skills and Knowledge Required- Bachelor's degree from a strong program in Finance, Economics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, or another quantitative field. Advanced degree is a plus.
- 4+ years of relevant experience in a quantitative or technical environment. Experience in implementation or portfolio construction research at an Asset Management or Hedge Fund preferred.
- Demonstrated experience with commercial or open-source portfolio optimizers (Axioma, Barra/MSCI, Northfield, Gurobi, etc.).
- Strong understanding of economic and financial concepts and demonstrated intuition around applying these concepts in a quantitative environment.
- Working understanding of modern portfolio theory, factor and risk models, and the systematic investment process.
- Demonstrated programming ability and experience in Python. Comfort with SQL, version control (Git), and structured codebases.
- Familiarity with equity market microstructure.
- Clear written and verbal communication; curious, rigorous, and detail-oriented; self-motivated and collaborative across functions.
- Hands-on experience leveraging agentic AI tools and large language models in a research, analytical, or software development context.
- CFA designation is a plus.
This is a hybrid position based in Los Angeles, CA which requires weekly attendance.
No recruiters, please.
Los Angeles Capital is an SEC registered investment adviser and required to track certain political contributions under rule 206(4)-5. Therefore, you will be required to disclose your prior political contributions.
For more information about the company, please refer to our website at www.lacapm.com.
