Director, Client Service - Bridgewater Associates

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 for 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

Bridgewater's unique success is the direct result of our unique way of being. We want an idea meritocracy in which meaningful work and meaningful relationships are pursued through radical truth and radical transparency. We require people to be extremely open, air disagreements, test each other's logic, and view discovering mistakes and weaknesses as a good thing that leads to improvement and innovation. It is by continually striving together for the highest levels of truth and excellence that we create meaningful work and meaningful relationships. Within this culture, Diversity and Inclusion is a top priority because it is essential to finding the best talent in the world, enabling our idea meritocracy, and creating an environment where all types of people can thrive. We have a full-time team as well as affinity networks that work on these issues - If you would like to learn more, please let your Bridgewater recruiter know.

Explore more information about Bridgewater's culture on our website here.

About the Client Service Department

The goal of Client Service is to build and grow meaningful relationships with the world's largest, most sophisticated investors and help clients achieve their goals through high quality return streams and tailored insights. To this end, we deeply understand the global pools of capital, develop strategies to effectively develop relationships, and partner with clients on their most difficult investment and portfolio construction problems.  We help our clients broaden their understanding of our investment process, strategies, and performance as well as deepen their understanding of financial markets more generally.  

About the Role

The Director will play a pivotal role within Bridgewater's client coverage organization. Depending on experience and team placement, the position is tasked with developing and maintaining partnerships with a variety of client types including but not limited to public pensions, sovereign wealth funds and institutional consultants.  This person will also develop innovative ways to expand our partnerships in line with team mission and goals.  

The Director has internal and external responsibilities. Externally, they are responsible for providing high value thought partnership, by managing communications with clients and external partners in a way that reinforces Bridgewater's brand and generates advocacy by developing relationships with second level client contacts. They are expected to represent Bridgewater's complex investment concepts in a clear, compelling manner in support of the maintenance and growth of client mandates. Internally, the Director holds the critical responsibility of serving as a nexus between their clients and the broader Client Service and Bridgewater teams. They are responsible for managing cross-departmental relationships, executing business plans and quarterbacking projects in pursuit of both the team's and client's strategic goals. They will contribute to the business strategy and planning at multiple levels. Additionally, this individual will join a team of other Directors responsible for process improvement initiatives, team projects, and cross team training.

Interested in learning more about working at Bridgewater? Hear about the experiences of our employees here.

You will drive the following responsibilities:

• Represent Bridgewater and our investment strategies directly to our clients – particularly as you gain more experience and content depth.
• Serve as an overall conduit of information by having a deep understanding of Bridgewater's research process, business infrastructure, and strategic initiatives to operate cross departmentally with various stakeholders (Investment Research, Legal, Finance, etc.) to drive projects to completion.
• Maintain accurate synthesis of current and historical client relationships
• Serve as a point-of-contact for client inquiries, questions, and requests, that support sales and client retention.
• Identify and solve problems efficiently and independently, both proactively and reactively as a result of a client need.
• Partner with Client Advisors, Analysts and Coordinators to manage the internal operations and tempo of the team.

You will be a click for the role if you have the following critical competencies:

• Client Book Management Skills: Successful candidates must be able to manage a large, diverse portfolio of projects and requests on an on-going basis. These streams of work range from simple requests that can be handled quickly to highly complex, multi-week engagements that involve multiple stakeholders both within Bridgewater and externally. Individuals must be able to manage this ever-changing portfolio of client engagements by being well organized and applying good common sense/practical thinking to manage each client interaction.
• Investment Acumen: The Director will be required to deeply understand Bridgewater's investment principles and concepts. While the individual will spend time in the role training to learn these concepts, successfully mastering this investment content requires strong analytical thinking abilities and an ability to connect complicated investment concepts to practical client questions and challenges and on through to potential investment advice/solutions. As the individual progresses in their development at Bridgewater, Directors will increasingly be required to not only understand these concepts, but to effectively communicate them to clients in a manner that is compelling and trustworthy.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum 7 years professional or equivalent experience
• Experience working with institutional clients
• Bachelor's degree with a strong academic record
• Effective written and oral communication skills, with strong detail orientation
• A high degree of proficiency in Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, and Excel; general comfort with learning and using new software tools

Physical Requirements

The anticipated onsite requirement for this role is four days per week at our Westport CT campus.

Wage Range

The estimated annual base salary range for this position is $230,000-400,000. Actual base salary will be dependent on the individual's skills, experience, and qualifications.  This role may also be eligible for other forms of compensation, including but not limited to a cash bonus.

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 opportunities that will challenge you and unlock your potential.

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 including:

• Health insurance with 100% premium covered and access to additional concierge medical services
• 401(k) plan with generous employer match
• Paid time off, including fully paid parental leave and a competitive PTO package
• Workplace flexibility and access to back up childcare
• Financial assistance for family building support, including adoption and egg freezing
• Workplace wellness, including on-site gyms, free meals and healthy snacks, and meditation rooms
• An engaged and active community that includes many company events, affinity networks, and extracurricular interest groups
• For a full list of Bridgewater benefits, click 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