Global Stock Selection Research

About the Role

AQR Capital Management seeks a talented Researcher to join the Global Stock Selection (GSS) team. This role is central to AQR's mission of applying financial theory to practical investment management. The GSS group is responsible for the portfolio management and research of AQR's strategies relating to individual equities and equity-related securities across all global liquid markets. These models are applied to market-neutral long/short portfolios in AQR hedge funds, as well as to long-only, relaxed-constraint, and low volatility portfolios for institutional equity mandates and mutual funds. The ideal candidate is intellectually rigorous, academically excellent, and committed to transparency and collaboration. You will be expected to challenge assumptions, ask critical questions, and contribute to a culture where data and evidence drive innovation.

What You'll Do

Your responsibilities will span the entire research lifecycle, ensuring that every analysis is robust, transparent, and reproducible. You will engage in alpha research and other quantitative analysis to improve current investment strategies in collaboration with the existing research team. This involves performing statistical and economic research using traditional financial and alternative data to develop new alpha signals. You will successfully manage, in collaboration with your supervising portfolio manager, all aspects of the research process, including data ingestion and processing, data analysis, methodology selection, implementation, testing, prototyping, and performance evaluation.

A key part of your role will involve building, training, and fine-tuning machine learning architectures for cross-sectional or time-series analysis. You will learn how to use the appropriate model for the problem at hand, construct economically nuanced features from raw data, and adjust or develop new frameworks to evaluate their effectiveness. You will also engage with the most recent academic and practitioner literature in the field. Occasionally, you will conduct research on various aspects of the implementation of investment strategies, such as trading cost models, risk models, optimization, and portfolio construction.

You will add features to AQR's proprietary research system to implement new research ideas and evaluate the robustness of investment hypotheses through out-of-sample testing, sensitivity analysis, and stress testing. Estimating and analyzing trading costs, market impact, and liquidity constraints to refine execution strategies will also be a core duty. You will support the development of portfolio construction techniques that align with risk management and regulatory requirements. Maintaining detailed documentation of methodologies, assumptions, and results will be essential to ensure clarity and reproducibility. You will present research findings to internal stakeholders, including portfolio managers, risk teams, and senior leadership. Staying current with advances in financial research, machine learning, and quantitative finance through academic and practitioner literature is also expected. Collaboration with engineers will be necessary to optimize data workflows and integrate research tools into production environments, contributing to the continuous improvement of AQR's research infrastructure and analytical best practices. You will participate in cross-team initiatives that explore emerging opportunities in equity markets worldwide.

Requirements

To be successful in this role, you must possess a B.S. degree from a top institution in a quantitative discipline such as computer science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, operations research, physics, or another related field. Academic or practitioner experience in machine learning methodologies is preferred. You must demonstrate strong analytical and problem-solving skills through academic or professional experience. Proficiency in programming languages commonly used in data analysis and modeling is required, along with a solid understanding of statistical methods and their application to financial data.

You must show the ability to work independently and manage multiple research priorities in a fast-paced environment. Excellent written and verbal communication skills are essential to convey complex ideas clearly. A firm commitment to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, accuracy, and intellectual rigor in all research activities is mandatory. You must be willing to challenge assumptions and engage in constructive debate to refine ideas and conclusions. The role requires U.S. employment eligibility, and sponsorship is not available.