Vanguard

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Employment Opportunities for PhD Candidates at Vanguard

Vanguard, one of the world’s largest asset management firms, offers employment opportunities for PhD candidates in economics and finance in a number of specialty areas. This document provides an overview of Vanguard’s program for interested candidates as well as for faculty advisers.

The Investment Strategy Group (ISG) is the thought leadership hub for Vanguard supporting our business partners, clients, and products and leading the industry conversation through the creation of innovative insights that shape our investment philosophy. We seek candidates with interests in lifecycle savings and retirement security to join our target retirement and goal-based investing research team.

Investment Analyst – Target Retirement & Goal Based Investing Research Team

Vanguard’s target retirement and college savings products are industry leading around the globe. To drive the industry conversation, we need passionate researchers who can push our knowledge forward and balance sound theory with practical reality. Crew members in these critical roles will leverage their financial modeling, life-cycle, asset allocation, and industry knowledge to produce industry leading research and find creative solutions to apply the research to meet our product and service needs across all our goal-based solutions to help our clients’ meet their financial goals.

In these roles, you will:

•Use your deep portfolio construction knowledge to produce impactful research on our asset allocation methodology for target retirement, 529, and other goal-based strategies

•Innovate on the best approaches to life-cycle modeling that will make a difference in our clients’ outcomes

•Be a voice for a company that stands up for its investors, ready to share your expertise with our business partners, clients, the media, industry groups, and policymakers

•Keep up to speed with and foresee industry trends, market activity, and regulatory change, and ensure our investment strategies address them

•Partner across our product, marketing, client facing, and advice business lines to amplify the impact of the teams’ research

What it takes:

•Strong knowledge of asset allocation and life-cycle modeling.
•Ability to drive rigorous research. PhD strongly preferred.
•Minimum three to five years overall experience.
•Solid knowledge of capital markets and investment concepts.
•Ability to work independently on multiple assignments simultaneously.
•Ability to collaborate with investment, product, marketing, and client facing experts to create impactful research
•Strong investment acumen and ability to learn new concepts quickly
•Great communicator - able to share ideas with others and debate best approaches to solving complex problems
•Strong computer skills, including broad knowledge of all MS Office software and usage of programming to implement ideas - Python, Matlab, or other coding language

About Vanguard

Vanguard is the largest mutual fund company in the U.S., and one of the largest asset managers in the world. Today, Vanguard manages more than US $5 trillion in global assets for more than 30 million individual and institutional investors, offering low-cost index and actively managed mutual funds as well as a growing array of ETFs. Our business operations are located principally in the U.S., although our presence is expanding rapidly in Australia, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. There are more than 17,000 Vanguard “crewmembers” who serve clients from 18 office locations worldwide. Vanguard aspires to be both the best place to invest and the best place to work. We foster a culture with a strong ethical foundation—with a focus on “doing the right thing” for clients. We attract employees who embrace this mindset. We also strive to attract employees who seek to develop a long-term career at Vanguard.

Working as a Researcher at Vanguard

Day-to-day work life. Day to day, the work of a researcher at Vanguard is centered on current research projects, including collaboration with members of their immediate workgroup as well as with others across the organization. Depending on the role, researchers are also called upon to speak either externally with clients, the media, industry groups, or policymakers, or internally with fellow crewmembers. Researchers may also serve as subject matter experts to business leaders and to business project teams throughout the organization. We value research expertise, as well as the ability to speak cogently and clearly about one’s area of specialization and interest.

Proprietary research v. academic collaboration. Much of the research work undertaken at Vanguard is proprietary in nature. Vanguard research is either applied to the development of proprietary investment strategies or published and disseminated to a range of external parties, which may include, depending on the topic, individual investors, institutional clients, the consulting community, the media and policymakers. It is our goal to deepen the quality of insights conveyed to the marketplace through our proprietary research.

At the same time, there are also opportunities for research professionals to pursue collaborations with academic partners in their area of professional interest. Vanguard encourages its professional staff to establish a national or global reputation in their field of expertise. While not a job requirement, external research collaborations can help advance this objective.

Location. In the U.S., PhD-level roles are located at Vanguard’s corporate headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Malvern is located in Chester County, approximately 25 miles west of the city of Philadelphia. The area is known for its high quality of life and its cultural amenities. There is also easy access by rail or car to Philadelphia and to cities and resorts on the U.S. Eastern seaboard, including New York and Washington.