Quantitative Research Analyst - Fellow
The Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations administers the SEC's nationwide examination and inspection program for registered self-regulatory organizations, NRSROs, broker-dealers, transfer agents, clearing agencies, investment companies, and investment advisers.
Responsibilities
This position is in the Event and Emerging Risk Examination Team (EERT) within the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE), one selection can be made in New York, NY or Washington, DC.
Event and Emerging Risk Examination Team (EERT) is being formed to strategically and proactively engage with financial firms about their preparedness for specific threats and market events. The EEET will also be utilized to quickly mobilize and respond when critical situations materialize.
As a Quantitative Research Analyst (Fellow), you will:
- Address exigent threats, incidents, and emerging risks through the conduct of examinations and inspections, firm engagement meetings, and monitoring activities;
- Serve as a quantitative research analyst working with SEC staff in building sophisticated models, determining proper empirical methodology, organizing data collection, writing unique programs, preparing authoritative written reports, and summarizing the studies in formal and informal presentations;
- Participate in examinations of registered investment advisers, investment companies, broker-dealers, and private fund managers, conducting interviews of compliance professionals and quantitative/modeling experts at the firms and support enforcement staff in investigating and litigating cases;
- Provide technical expertise for the design and conduct of comprehensive, complicated financial data studies, surveys, reviews, and research projects where the boundaries may be broad and difficult to determine in advance; - Conduct research in areas such as: the analysis of new financial instruments and strategies, options, and derivatives involving financial theory and applied mathematics, as well as computation and the practice of programming.
- Support the review and verification of trading strategies for a variety of instruments and markets such as high frequency trading, algorithms, statistical arbitrage, correlation or volatility trading; and
- Develop state-of-the-art software tools to collect, and analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured data
Travel Required
Occasional travel - You may be expected to travel more than 25%.
Qualifications
All qualification requirements must be met by the closing date of this announcement.
Qualifying experience may be obtained in the private or public sector. Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. Qualifying education must have been obtained from an accredited college or university recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
BASIC REQUIREMENT: All applicants must possess the basic requirement below.
- Degree: Mathematics, statistics, computer science, actuarial science, physics, economics, financial engineering or related technical field. Degree must be at least at the undergraduate degree level or
- Combination of education and experience: Courses equivalent to a major field of study as shown in paragraph A above, plus additional education or appropriate experience.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENT: In addition to meeting the basic requirement, applicants must also meet the minimum qualification requirement.
SK-14: Applicant must have at least one year of specialized experience equivalent to the GS/SK-13 level. Specialized experience includes all of the following:
- Applying the theories, principles, and processes of quantitative research; AND
- Interpreting financial and securities industry data or analysis of data sets in science/engineering/applied mathematics/statistics; AND
- Independently developing, maintaining, and/or validating models used for forecasting, valuation, instrument strategy selection, portfolio construction or risk management using modern software languages such as Python, R, C/C++/C#, kdb+/q in UNIX/Shell environments; AND
- Independently manipulating large data sets to develop hands-on programmatic applications of probability and statistics.