Private Markets Quantitative Modeler Vice President

The Private Markets SWAT Team

This team provides quantitative modeling solutions for private markets across a wide variety of problems, including nowcasting private asset and fund values, forecasting alpha in private asset deals, and optimizing strategic asset allocation with illiquid assets. The team builds and connects innovative models and methodologies to support investment decision-making in illiquid asset classes.

Private Markets SWAT is a Team within Aladdin Financial Engineering (AFE)

Aladdin Financial Engineering (AFE) is a 400+ person group within BlackRock Solutions, the business responsible for the research and development of Aladdin’s financial models. The models developed and supported by AFE span a wide array of financial products covering equities, fixed income, commodities, derivatives, and private markets. AFE provides investment insights that range from an analysis of cash flows on a single bond, to the overall financial risk associated with an entire portfolio, balance sheet, or enterprise.

Role Description

We are seeking an experienced quantitative researcher for a Vice President role on the Aladdin Private Markets SWAT Team, a small group dedicated to solving novel modeling challenges in private markets. This role will focus on expanding and adapting our suite of Nowcasting models to build new, next generation private market indices. The VP will guide the research, design, and implementation of valuation models, oversee day-to-day index estimation, and ensure a rigorous, high-quality production process. A core responsibility will be extending these models to new asset classes, data environments, and market structures, requiring both empirical rigor and innovative problem solving.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the research, design, and development of new Nowcasting and valuation models across additional private asset classes.
• Conduct empirical research to calibrate models to private market data and evaluate performance using backtesting, benchmarking, and robustness analysis.
• Build, maintain, and productionize model codebases, ensuring reliability, transparency, and scalability.
• Partner with internal stakeholders to define use cases, communicate model behavior and limitations, and support integration into investment and analytics workflows.
• Contribute to research publications, conference presentations, and client-facing discussions highlighting the team’s modeling innovations.
• Support broader Private Markets SWAT Team initiatives, including bespoke modeling projects for portfolio management or advisory teams.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Finance, Economics, Statistics, or a related quantitative field.
• 3+ years of experience in empirical financial modeling or quantitative research in industry or academia. (Graduating Ph.D.s will be considered for a comparable junior role.)
• Strong foundation in empirical modeling, including time-series analysis and Bayesian methods.
• Additional consideration for experience with private markets or empirical asset pricing.
• Proficiency in Python and willingness to adopt new tools, libraries, and technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to conduct rigorous empirical research, manage complex datasets, and design well-structured analyses.
• Effective communicator capable of explaining quantitative concepts to diverse audiences and collaborating across technical and non-technical teams.

Key skills/competency

• Quantitative Modeling
• Private Markets
• Financial Engineering
• Aladdin
• Time-series Analysis
• Bayesian Methods
• Empirical Research
• Python
• Valuation Models
• Index Estimation