Investment Analytics Associate

About the Job

Northwestern Mutual Capital (NMC) seeks an Investment Analytics Associate to improve how investment processes, data, and technology support front-office decision-making. The role spans NMC's investment transaction lifecycle, including deal sourcing, due diligence, underwriting, valuation, portfolio monitoring, performance analysis, and reporting.

This is an role for a professional who can combine investment understanding with structured problem-solving, quantitative analysis, and process design. You will work directly with investment professionals and technology partners to diagnose complex workflow challenges, define practical solutions, and help translate promising ideas into durable operating improvements.

The strongest candidates will bring credibility with investment stakeholders, comfort working through ambiguity, and a demonstrated ability to influence change without relying on formal authority.

You will work on problems that often cross organizational, process, data, and technology boundaries. Requirements may be incomplete, stakeholder needs may differ, and the best solution may require both near-term pragmatism and a longer-term operating vision. Success requires investment context, structured analysis, sound judgment, and persistence through implementation.

What You'll Do:

• Work across the investment lifecycle and gain a broad view of how investment decisions, data, systems, and operating processes connect.
• Partner directly with investment professionals to solve high-value problems rather than focusing only on documentation or administration.
• Shape analytical tools, workflows, and data products that can improve decision quality, execution speed, transparency, and control.
• Operate at the intersection of investments, analytics, technology, and change management.
• Take ownership of complex initiatives from problem definition through implementation and adoption.
• Map and assess end-to-end front-office processes across deal sourcing, underwriting, approval, closing, valuation, portfolio monitoring, and investment decision-making.
• Lead structured discovery with deal teams to identify manual bottlenecks, redundant steps, unclear ownership, data gaps, control risks, and underused system capabilities.
• Translate investment and business needs into clear process, data, analytical, and technology requirements.
• Design future-state workflows that simplify work, strengthen controls, improve data capture, and create scalable operating practices.
• Develop and prioritize improvement roadmaps with defined objectives, milestones, dependencies, resource needs, risks, and expected business impact.
• Evaluate how front-office platforms and analytical tools, including eFront, Snowflake, Power BI, and AI-enabled capabilities, can better support investment workflows.
• Build business cases that quantify effort, risk reduction, capacity benefits, and expected value to support prioritization and leadership decisions.
• Define and refine investment metrics, analytical views, and decision-support tools in partnership with investment professionals.
• Build or guide the development of Power BI dashboards and analytical outputs that support portfolio management and senior leadership.
• Support eFront configuration, data validation, troubleshooting, user enablement, and adoption of consistent practices.
• Contribute to the design of reliable, well-governed, AI-ready investment datasets.
• Create clear process maps, operating procedures, analytical documentation, and implementation plans.
• Drive adoption by facilitating decisions, resolving ambiguity, communicating changes, and reinforcing new ways of working.

What You'll Bring to the Role:

• A bachelor's or master's degree in finance, economics, statistics, data science, computer science, financial engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• Two or more years of experience in an investment, quantitative, analytics, business analysis, process improvement, or related role.
• Demonstrated experience analyzing and improving business processes within investment management, asset management, financial services, or another analytically complex environment.
• Working knowledge of investment workflows and the ability to engage credibly with investment professionals.
• A track record of identifying operational challenges and translating findings into practical, measurable improvements.
• Strong facilitation and stakeholder-management skills, including the ability to lead discovery sessions, surface competing needs, and build alignment.
• Ability to structure ambiguous problems, evaluate alternatives, and make clear recommendations supported by evidence.
• Ability to build business cases and communicate tradeoffs involving effort, risk, control, capacity, and expected value.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present recommendations and roadmaps to technical, investment, and senior leadership audiences.

Skills You Will Have:

• Adaptive Communication: Formulates strategies to be used to convey complex information about services, products, systems, or processes to targeted audiences; communicates and liaises between technical and non-technical audiences.
• Attention to Detail: Focuses on specific details to spot and correct errors in advance of them being found and surpass quality expectations. Performs work with thorough proofreading for presentation, content, accuracy, and overall quality.
• Financial Market Monitoring: Consistently tracks and analyzes financial market data and news, evaluates trends and events that may impact investment portfolios or financial decisions, and makes informed decisions based on this information. Stays up to date on economic indicators, market news, and global events, and understands how they relate to investment opportunities and risks.
• Industry Knowledge: Demonstrates extensive knowledge of common practices, regulatory considerations, market trends and the competitive landscape within a particular industry / sector to better understand and address unique client requirements, challenges, and context.
• Risk Evaluation: Assesses the significance of identified risks, makes judgments about the significance of the risk in relation to the organization's objectives and assesses whether the risk is acceptable or not. Considers factors such as the organization's risk appetite, risk tolerance, and risk management resources to help decision-makers determine which risks require further action and which can be accepted or tolerated.

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We believe in fairness and transparency. It’s why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you’re living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.

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Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes talented individuals of all backgrounds. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.