Lead Quantitative Analyst - New Product Development

The Area: Morningstar Indexes Team leverages its expertise in credit research, equity research, manager research, asset allocation, and portfolio construction to create innovative investment solutions. We use Morningstar's intellectual property to create indexes that empower investors to achieve their goals at every stage of the investment process - market monitoring, benchmarking, and asset allocation. Morningstar Indexes offers a broad suite of global equity, bond and asset allocation indexes.

Responsibilities:

- Develop rules-based benchmark and strategic beta indexes across various sub-asset classes with internal partners and clients

- Be responsible for the index development life cycle: ideation, data analysis, index design and back-testing, operationalization and index launch

- Embrace and enhance a vibrant, high-performing R&D culture that delivers innovative investment solutions through a defined research process

- Collaborate effectively with the broader Morningstar research organization including credit ratings, quantitative, manager or sustainability research teams, and product management to develop novel indexes that leverage Morningstar IP

- Help develop new tools and capabilities to perform portfolio construction and analytics independently, including the use of statistical and machine learning techniques

- Provide support for product management, sales & marketing efforts through white papers, client roadshows and seminars

Requirements:

- At least 4 years of experience at an index provider, asset management company or investment bank, with demonstrated quantitative investment analysis expertise

- Prior experience with leading projects independently or guiding research analysts is preferable

- Bachelor's degree in a quantitative, financial discipline, or engineering; a CFA, MBA or graduate degree in a quantitative or financial discipline is helpful

- Knowledge of institutional investing, modern portfolio theory and index construction processes

- Hands-on analytical and quantitative skills. Practical experience with programming and database packages. Proficiency in at least one programming language (Python, Matlab or R)

- Exposure to use of AI tools (Microsoft Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Gemini) to speed up data analysis, research, and documentation.

- Ability to work with AI agents to automate simple multi-step tasks and improve workflow efficiency.

- Ability to communicate effectively with global clients and internally

- Excellent oral, written communication and presentation skills, with ability to distil complex ideas into simple explanations

- Experience of writing and publishing financial research papers, whitepapers and articles is and added advantage.

Morningstar is an equal opportunity employer.