Senior Buy-Side Risk Quant at Thornburg Investment Management – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Thornburg is a global investment firm delivering on strategy for institutions, financial professionals and investors worldwide. The privately held firm, founded in 1982, is an active, high-conviction manager of fixed income, equities, and multi-asset solutions.

As an independent firm, Thornburg can take on a wide range of opportunities, explore ideas thoroughly and work across strategies to deliver consistent risk-adjusted outperformance over the long term. The firm attracts free-thinking professionals who are eager to pursue investment outcomes beyond the confines of popular wisdom. From nimble operational capabilities to principles and actions fitting of a global citizen, Thornburg’s world-class investment platform and team are aligned on strategy to serve investors.

Job Summary

Thornburg Investment Management ($58 billion in AUM) is seeking a senior analyst to join the Portfolio Analytics and Investment Risk group. You will serve as an embedded thought partner to portfolio managers across equity, fixed income, and multi-asset class strategies, translating quantitative insights into portfolio construction decisions and investment risk that directly impact client outcomes.

At Thornburg, we believe that risk and opportunity are inseparable aspects of active management: understanding one deepens your understanding of the other. Our analysts sit alongside portfolio managers in monthly risk reviews collaborate on stress test design, blend ad hoc fundamental characteristics with risk factor views to empower security selection, and develop proprietary analytics that shape how the firm constructs and manages portfolios across market cycles.

The work is substantive and varied. In a given week you might decompose active risk into factor and security-selection contributions for an equity strategy, design a macroeconomic stress test with a fixed income PM, build a self-service Power BI dashboard tracking the migration of benchmark constituents across Thornburg’s proprietary basket framework, create and back-test a model portfolio for a new product launch, or present a research note on risk positioning after a market dislocation. Every analytic you produce must pass a demanding test: portfolio managers must find it not merely interesting, but actionable.

Duties and Responsibilities

Risk Management and Portfolio Construction

• Conduct ex-ante risk analysis for equity and fixed income portfolios using factor-based risk models (FactSet Multi-Asset Class with Axioma equity factors). Decompose tracking error into style, country, industry, currency, and security-selection components and communicate findings in terms portfolio managers can act on.
• Design, calibrate, and interpret stress test scenarios in collaboration with portfolio managers. Translate fundamental macro views into factor shocks, evaluate portfolio-level outcomes as they evolve over time, and drill into sector and region or asset type contributions.
• Monitor and enforce a formalized active risk budget framework: target ex-ante tracking error ranges, ensure the majority of active risk derives from security selection, and limit single-factor theme concentration.
• Blend fundamental security characteristics with quantitative factor views to deliver integrated risk and opportunity assessments that support both security selection and portfolio construction.
• Perform trade simulation analysis, modeling the risk impact of adding or removing specific securities before execution.
• Create and back-test model portfolios in support of new product development across 40-Act, ETF, SMA, and UCITS structures, collaborating with Product and Distribution teams through testing and launch.
  

Analytics Development and Delivery

• Maintain and expand a suite of self-service analytics delivered through Power BI, covering risk decomposition, performance attribution, basket composition, factor drift, fund flows, and MPT statistics.
• Build and maintain the underlying data processes in FactSet, Bloomberg, and other systems. Own data quality and production process integrity.
• Develop proprietary tools that bridge quantitative and fundamental perspectives, including Thornburg’s Basket Tool, which algorithmically classifies the equity universe into Basic Value, Consistent Earner, and Emerging Franchise categories using econometric factor exposures.
• Prototype new analytics collaboratively with portfolio managers, iterate on feedback, and transition validated tools to production.

Research and Communication

• Prepare and deliver standardized risk packets. Lead monthly risk meetings with portfolio management teams, Heads of Equity and Fixed Income, presenting quantitative findings in the context of strategy objectives and market conditions.
• Author research notes on portfolio risk, factor exposures, peer positioning, and market dynamics.
• Contribute to the quantitative refinement of each strategy’s Philosophy and Process documentation.
• Lead special initiatives of strategic importance for the team and the broader investment platform.

How You'll Succeed

• You are a natural translator between quantitative and fundamental languages. You can explain a factor decomposition to a PM who thinks in terms of businesses and balance sheets, and you can translate a PM’s macro thesis into a stress test specification.
• You are inherently skeptical of data and model output. You check, question, and validate before presenting. You understand that communicating incorrect information to investors or portfolio managers is unacceptable.
• You thrive under pressure and manage competing priorities with discipline. When markets are moving, you respond with rigorous ad hoc analysis on tight timelines.
• You have the intellectual humility to learn from portfolio managers and the conviction to push back when the data warrants it. Robust debate around portfolio holdings and exposures is welcomed here.
• You take genuine ownership of your production processes, data quality, and analytical output. You do not need to be told to investigate an anomaly.
• You are drawn to continuous improvement: evaluating new tools, refining existing processes, and expanding both your technical and fundamental knowledge.

Education and Credentials

• Graduate degree (MS or PhD) in finance, economics, financial engineering, mathematics, statistics, or related quantitative discipline.
• CFA charter, FRM certification, or equivalent professional designation is strongly preferred.

Experience

• Minimum 5 years of buy-side experience in portfolio analytics, quantitative risk management, or a closely related function covering both equity and fixed income asset classes.
• Demonstrated track record of producing analytics that informed portfolio construction decisions, not just reports that were filed away.
• Extensive hands-on experience with FactSet (PA, PRB, SPAR, US) and Bloomberg. Working knowledge of the Axioma risk models and Optimizer is a significant advantage.
• Experience with performance attribution methodologies is highly desirable.
• Proficiency with Power BI or equivalent business intelligence platforms for delivering self-service analytics.

Technical Skills

• Expert-level understanding of factor-based risk models, including their mathematical foundations, assumptions, and practical limitations. You should know when a model tells you something useful and when it is not.
• Strong command of modern portfolio theory, portfolio optimization, risk budgeting, scenario analysis, and stress testing techniques.
• Working proficiency in Python, R, or SQL for data analysis, automation, and ad hoc quantitative research. Experience with VBA and C# is a plus.
• Familiarity with fixed income analytics: duration, convexity, spread measures, prepayment models, credit risk metrics.
• Experience with Morningstar, Investortools Perform, Intex, or similar fixed income analytics platforms is preferred.

Job Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Employer 401(k) safe harbor and profit-sharing contributions.
• Work/life programs such as flexible work arrangements, flexible paid time off, paid parental leave, employee assistance plan, commuter benefits, student loan repayment program, education reimbursement program
• Community involvement opportunities.
• Onsite cafeteria.
• Onsite fitness center.
• Referral Program

Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico. Founded in 1610 and nicknamed "The City Different," Santa Fe captures hearts and minds with its museums, restaurants, theater, opera, and adobe-style architecture. With an average of over 300 sunny days per year and picturesque landscape, it's no wonder that outdoor activities such as skiing and hiking in "The Land of Enchantment" attract visitors from around the world.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, gender, gender identity or protected veteran status.