VP, Quantitative Researcher (Multi-Asset Liquidity & Execution Performance)

GIC is one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds. With over 2,000 employees across 11 offices around the world, we invest in more than 40 countries globally across asset classes and businesses. Working at GIC gives you exposure to an extraordinary network of the world’s industry leaders. As a leading global long-term investor, we Work at the Point of Impact for Singapore’s financial future, and the communities we invest in worldwide.

Portfolio Execution & Solutions Group​

We have teams in Singapore, London and New York, and we provide a full spectrum of services for the Total Portfolio. These include trading and structured advisory, funding and liquidity management, securities lending, beta management, portfolio rebalancing, applied quantitative research, and counterparty relationship management. We also deliver systematic portfolio solutions and innovation, such as portfolio construction techniques and tail-risk management, to strengthen total portfolio construction and resilience.

Portfolio Execution & Advisory

You will be part of a team that delivers best-in-class execution (trading) across asset classes and extends it into structured advisory through the newly formed Implementation Advisory Panel. The team comprises the Global Trading Unit and Execution Research & Advisory.

This role sits within the Execution Research & Advisory (ERA) team a global team of market structure specialists based in Singapore and New York. We specialise in multi-asset quantitative research, focusing on market microstructure and liquidity modelling to improve execution outcomes and systematise decision-making.

We deliver through two connected capabilities. Execution Research translates insight from our own work and academic literature into practical execution solutions. Execution Advisory provides judgment-led, evidence-based guidance to the traders and investment teams making live decisions. Together they improve execution outcomes across GIC, protecting investment returns and reducing transaction costs.

Position Overview

We are seeking a quantitative researcher to lead ERA's cross-asset work on liquidity modelling and execution performance measurement from Singapore. You will work closely with traders and portfolio managers, identifying problems as they emerge, with the time to solve them properly. Reporting to the Head of ERA, your work will inform execution across GIC's portfolios globally.

At VP level you will be expected to set direction as well as deliver. The role is deliberately cross-asset: rather than covering a single asset-class book, you will work across research frameworks spanning equities, futures, FX, rates and credit, making the methods developed in one market usable in the others.

Key Responsibilities

• Deepen ERA's structural liquidity and capacity modelling capability. Build and extend the models GIC relies on to estimate market capacity, volume and liquidation horizons under both normal and stressed conditions. Set a multi-phase roadmap for this work and translate it into prioritised research with clear measures of success.
• Advance ERA's execution performance measurement and attribution. Refine how GIC measures execution quality: benchmark design and its pitfalls, slippage decomposition, reversion and mark-out analysis, and the attribution of outcomes to decisions rather than to market conditions. Validate against realised outcomes rather than in-sample fit and ensure findings inform how execution decisions are made.
• Connect the research agenda across the team. Maintain consistent definitions, data processes and evaluation methods, bring together researchers working on the same problem in different markets, and provide additional depth on individual asset-class problems.
• Advise traders and investment teams on live execution decisions. Turn ambiguous business questions into tractable analysis and give evidence-based guidance on large flows and transitions, rebalances and other liquidity events, including through cross-team advisory engagements.
• Guide the liquidity and performance measurement roadmap for our proprietary execution analytics platform. Propose new models, metrics and datasets, work with developers to deploy them into production, and feed results back into the platform so one-off answers become durable, reusable capability.
• Strengthen research quality across the wider team. Review code and methodology, contribute to research discussions, and represent ERA externally with peer institutions, dealers, platforms, vendors and academia.

Qualifications and Skills

You will bring:

• Professional experience in a quantitative research or markets role (for example as a researcher, quantitative analyst, trader or portfolio manager), including experience taking research from problem formulation through to application. Depth in at least one of equities, futures, FX, rates or credit, combined with familiarity with the others.
• Expertise in liquidity and market impact modelling: transient and permanent impact, participation constraints, intraday volume profiles, the effect of repeated trading, and how liquidity behaves under stress.
• Grounding in execution performance measurement: Transaction cost analysis (TCA) across asset classes, benchmark construction and its limitations, counterparty and algo evaluation, and experiment design for testing execution choices.
• Experience with the market and transaction data landscape, including high-granularity tick, quote and order book data and a realistic view of its limitations.
• A practical understanding of where ML/AI genuinely add value in execution research and decision support, and where simpler, more interpretable methods are the better choice.
• The ability to scope ill-defined problems into research that can be delivered, to allocate scarce research effort to the highest-value opportunities, and to explain complex analysis precisely to technical and non-technical audiences
• Coding and quantitative data analysis skills, particularly in Python and SQL.

Also useful, though not essential:

• Experience representing a research team to dealers, trading platforms and vendors.
• Experience mentoring junior researchers or running research projects spanning more than one person’s work.
• Experience evaluating counterparties and execution algorithms.
• Experience with kdb+/q and Databricks.

What impact can you make in this role?

You will be part of a team that seeks to deliver top-tier trade execution, to efficiently manage total portfolio liquidity, and to improve asset utilisation for GIC.

Work at the Point of Impact

We need to be forward-looking to attract the right people to help us become the Leading Global Long-term Investor. Join our ambitious, agile, and diverse teams - be empowered to push boundaries and pursue innovative ideas, share your views, and be heard. Be anchored on our PRIME Values: Prudence, Respect, Integrity, Merit and Excellence, which guides us in how we make our day-to-day decisions. We strive to inspire. To make an impact. .

Flexibility at GIC
At GIC, our offices are vibrant hubs for ideation, professional growth, and interpersonal connection.  At the same time, we believe that flexibility allows us to do our best work and be our best selves.  Thus, our teams come into the office four days per week to harness the benefits of in-person collaboration, but have the flexibility to choose which days they work from home and adjust this arrangement as situational needs arise.

GIC is an equal opportunity employer 
As an employer, we passionately believe every individual brings with them unique diversity of thought and perspectives to meaningfully enrich perspectives of GIC teams to drive competitive performance. An inclusive environment yields exceptional contribution.

Learn more about our Portfolio Execution and Solutions Group Department here:

https://gic.careers/departments/portfolio-execution-solutions-group/