Trade Operations 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 

We are responsible for implementing the investment views of the world’s largest hedge fund while minimizing transaction costs and information leakage. We do this by constantly deepening our understanding of liquidity and market dynamics to develop systematic, non-discretionary trade execution strategies. 

About Your Role   

The Trade Operations Associate role is part of a dynamic team directly involved with the day-to-day trading that is part of Bridgewater’s investment engine. This role is focused on supporting the daily activities on the trading desk and portfolio generation, locking down trading risk, overseeing the quality of our external reporting. You will work directly with traders, portfolio associates, implementation team managers, and our back office partners. It is a role that will both allow and demand very fast learning and evolution. It will provide a fundamental knowledge of how to actively minimize risks and liaise with departments and counterparties to be accountable for sustaining a minimum level of risk. Further, the role involves dealing with a fast paced, detail-oriented environment, where accuracy and control are vital, and excellent communication and escalation is paramount. This position also requires flexibility to support different markets across many asset classes throughout the Global trading day, and as such, it will provide a uniquely wide foundation of understanding. 

As part of the Trading Execution team, this role represents an exciting opportunity to generate substantial impact, test your limitations, and engage with top level thinkers as part of a group that seeks to systematically understand the markets. With focus on discipline, control and risk management, you will support the trading teams to ensure they are fulfilling their responsibilities to trade accurately and efficiently in the market. You will learn how to interpret risks, how to minimize those risks and how to contribute to ensuring repeatable, high quality outcomes. 

You will drive the following responsibilities: 

• Support daily activities of the trading desk, the portfolio generation team, and are the front office’s primary touch point with Back Office providers. You will be working closely with traders, the portfolio generation team, Back Office partners, strategists, technologists, and vendors 
• Own daily lockdown of trading activity. This includes affirmation of trades, investigating and resolving trade breaks, minimizing risk and ensuring straight through processing to our back office 
• Execute and oversee specific processes to support trading team parameter generation, consuming data from third party vendors to enable portfolio generation, and managing corporate actions. 
• Reviewing regulatory filings and counterparty reporting prepared by our third-party vendors 
• Owning and resolving specific inquiries and ensure timely resolution 
• Reporting metrics and statistics that enable the team to make decisions and constantly improve the department 

You will be a click for the role if you: 

• Hold a high degree of personal responsibility and ownership 
• Are able to consistently step back and improve your way of operating. 
• Have a sense of pride, ownership and accountability in the work that you own. 
• Weigh what they know and understand in determining confidence. Open to other perspectives than your own, without accepting illogical/irrational ones. 
• Are able to reflect objectively on one's own behavior; step above oneself and see things from a higher level with a good understanding of their strengths/weaknesses in a particular situation. 

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 

• Possess a BA/BS in numerical or business-based discipline, with a quality academic record, from an accredited undergraduate institution. 
• Experience with Trading Backoffice Operations is preferred but not required 

Physical Requirements  

• This is a fully on-site role (5 days/week), and this employee will work from our office in Westport, CT.    

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.  

You will grow with us by:

• Undergoing a training program of structured classes and on-the-job apprenticeship. 
• Taking ownership of increasingly complex systems and processes. 
• Taking on oversight and mentorship responsibilities to grow talent as you gain experience. 
• Opportunities to grow your career across Bridgewater depending on your strengths, weaknesses, and experience. 

Compensation Band:

• The wage range for this role is $120,000 - $135,000 inclusive of base salary and discretionary target bonus. The expected base salary for this role is between 80% - 90% of this wage range.  

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