Data Associate

About Bridgewater  

Bridgewater Associates is a premier asset management firm, focused on delivering unique insight and partnership for the most sophisticated global institutional investors.  

Our investment process is driven by a tireless pursuit to understand how the world’s markets and economies work - using cutting-edge technology to validate and execute on timeless and universal investment principles.  

Founded in 1975, we are a community of independent thinkers who share a commitment to excellence. By fostering a culture of openness, transparency, and inclusion, we strive to unlock the most complex questions in investment strategy, management, and corporate culture.  

Explore more information about Bridgewater on our website here.  

Our Culture  

Our culture is anchored in excellence, meaning constant improvement, and it is deeply tied to our mission. Because markets are objective, competitive, and getting smarter everyday, we need to keep rapidly improving to have any chance of beating them. Truth is our most essential tool for engaging with the markets and constantly improving because once you know what's true about your problems and opportunities, you can determine how to get better. Valuing truth means being transparent about your decision-making and mistakes, giving and receiving feedback with humility, and fighting for the best answers over hierarchy, ego, or self-interest. Operating this way is hard - it's only possible because we build meaning in our work and relationships. This meaning comes from the audacity of the mission, and the joy of working alongside people who make you a better version of yourself. The culture, like Bridgewater itself, is always evolving. In 1997 our founder Ray Dalio wrote down his lessons, starting with a Philosophy Statement which remains our foundation. This later evolved into a set of 300+ Principles. In 2022, when Ray transitioned the company, we re-underwrote several of those principles and evolved others, with a specific focus on Meritocracy. Today the culture sits, alongside our people, as our most important edge. When we get it right, it’s the engine that powers everything else. 

About the Investment Implementation Department   

The Investment Implementation department is a community of diverse investment professionals whose mission is to implement our investment strategies and client portfolios excellently. Our Department is responsible for ensuring the excellent implementation of our systematic investment approach, from raw data to executed trades, with processes and logic that reflect the full richness of our investment insight, executed with a near-zero error rate, and engineered and orchestrated in a way that facilitates oversight and compounding. This is an investment department, owning the investment outcomes, and the mandate includes both the ‘run’ responsibility and the ‘transform’ responsibility, meaning daily operations as well as over time renovation of our systems.  

We fulfill our mission by applying four operating principles:  

• Understand and deliver internal client needs. Partner with our internal clients to understand, offer implementation designs, and deliver solutions, while proactively educating and communicating outcomes to ACLs (Asset Class Leads) and CIOs.  
• Own our investment intent. Own our investment intent in full, in letter and spirit.    
• Continuously improve. Have and evolve an investment pipeline to meet current and future internal client needs.    
• Systematically and relentlessly deliver quality outcomes. Apply our best logic systematically, discipline, expertise, and controls to every signal, position, and trade in every market 

About the Team  

As part of the research team, the Signal Implementation group is responsible for owning and deeply understanding both the data that flows from the outside world and the logic applied to it within Bridgewater’s systematic trading systems. 

 About Your Role  

As a Data Associate, you will help us achieve our mission by owning and deeply understanding the data and logic used to build Bridgewater’s systematic trading systems. This means understanding the content itself, the process by which the content is updated, validated, and evolved and how this content fits into Bridgewater’s understanding of the world. 

In this role, you will be expected to understand both the current data ecosystem and the needs of investment professionals, with a long-term vision for how our investment data ecosystem should scale and adapt over time. You will take ownership of key data workflows, ensuring high standards for investment data quality and consistency across the firm. This is a fast paced, critical function that directly impacts portfolio construction and research alpha. 

We are looking for someone who combines a rigorous analytical mindset with a passion for data, content integrity, and system improvement. The ideal candidate has several years of experience working with data systems. 

Interested in learning more about working at Bridgewater? Hear about the experiences of our employees here. 

You will drive the following responsibilities: 

• Understanding sets of investment “data concepts” - how outside data is used at Bridgewater from both a conceptual investment and technical construction perspective (e.g., pricing, macroeconomic, fundamentals, alternative data). 
• Validating the accuracy of those data concepts - providing domain expertise in content understanding, especially around market, security master, and time-series data. 
• Accepting and engaging with new data as our systematic investment engine incorporates it - refining and maintaining high standards for data engineering and investment data integrity. 
• Continuously evolving these data concepts over time by improving the logic or technical definitions, contributing directly to improving Bridgewater’s investment logic. 
• Working with Bridgewater’s partners in the content supply chain (analytics, engineering, and technology) to address data quality, architectural or logic issues. 
• Collaborating with vendors, engineers, and data consumers to streamline workflows and improve data time-to-insight.
• Operate workflows that enrich and augment unstructured data assets.
• Execute and evaluate data creation for benchmarking of LLM assets and AI tools.

You will be a click for the role if you: 

• Are analytical, highly logical, and structured in your thinking 
• Are deeply interested in understanding financial markets 
• Are passionate about data 
• Think in terms of systems and naturally look for ways to solve problems through the evolution of those systems 
• Hold a high degree of personal responsibility and ownership in everything you do 
• Enjoy learning about new data tools and programming languages 

Interested in learning more about working at Bridgewater? Hear about the experiences of our employees here. 

Position Requirements  

To succeed within our unique culture and work environment, individuals must demonstrate humility, innate curiosity, and openness to new ideas and approaches. Candidates must be driven, confident, and goal-oriented. All Bridgewater employees are expected to be honest, exceptionally direct, and eager to provide and receive objective feedback. Our employees constantly strive for self-improvement through feedback and self-reflection and are committed to the pursuit of excellence. 

Minimum Qualifications 

• 4-year degree from an accredited undergraduate institution. 
• 2-4 years of relevant experience in data. 
• Strong working knowledge of financial data (e.g., Bloomberg, Refinitiv, alternative data vendors). 
• Experience working with time-series data and security master data. 
• Familiarity with data modeling, data pipelines, and cloud-based data solutions (e.g., Snowflake, AWS). 
• Proficient in at least one programming language. 
• Strong analytical skills, a systems-oriented mindset, and ability to work independently in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment. 

Physical Requirements 

The anticipated onsite requirement for this role is three days per week at our Westport, CT campus and one day per week at our NYC campus. 

Why Choose Bridgewater?  

It takes all types to make Bridgewater great. We seek a diverse group of innovative thinkers and push them to engage in rigorous and thoughtful inquiry. We develop people through an honest examination of their abilities and performance, enabling personal growth and professional development. We strive to provide you with opportunities that will challenge you and unlock your potential.  

Compensation Band 

The expected annual base salary for this position is $120,000-$150,000. The total compensation package includes variable compensation in the form of a discretionary target bonus.   

One of our core priorities at Bridgewater is to enable our employees to build a great life and career, and we believe our benefits are an important extension of that philosophy. As such, currently Bridgewater offers a competitive suite of benefits. Explore more information about Bridgewater’s benefits on our website here.  

Bridgewater reserves the right to change its current benefits program at any time, in a manner that is consistent with applicable federal and state regulations.  

This job description is not a contract and confers no contractual rights, privileges, or benefits on any applicant or potential applicant. Bridgewater has the right to change any and all terms of this job description, including, but not limited to, job responsibilities, qualifications and benefits. Nothing in this job description constitutes an offer or guarantee of employment. Please note that we do not provide immigration sponsorship for this position.  

Bridgewater Associates, LP is an Equal Opportunity Employer