2027 PhD Summer Associate, Machine Learning Research
A 10-week summer role for PhD candidates on AQR's machine learning strategies for stock selection, asset allocation, risk and trading. Associates run research projects with researchers, portfolio managers and traders.
What you’d work on
Our reading of the posting: what a new hire in this role would most likely spend their first months on.
- Research new ML investment strategies on financial data
- Study trading cost models, risk models and portfolio construction
- Add features to the proprietary research system
- Help build research infrastructure
What they ask for
Required
- PhD candidate in finance, economics or a quantitative field
- Machine learning libraries such as TensorFlow or PyTorch
- Empirical research on large data sets
- Econometrics or statistics
- Optimisation methods
- Python, R, C++ or MATLAB
- High performance and cloud computing
Preferred
- ML applied to finance
- AI and agentic framework research
- Education
- PhD candidate (graduating December 2027 or Spring 2028) from a top programme in finance, economics or a quantitative discipline.
- Experience
- PhD students; research experience expected.
- Languages and tools
- Markets
- equities, multi-asset
How to prepare
- Complete an empirical ML project on cross-sectional stock returns
- Learn how to validate ML models on financial data
- Study portfolio optimisation with trading cost models
- Review econometrics for panel data
What to study
- Financial Machine Learning
- Empirical Asset Pricing and Factor Investing
- Portfolio Theory and Quantitative Investment
- Econometrics and Financial Time Series
The NLP and ML Quant Researcher roadmap sets out the stages for this kind of role, with free resources for each.
Open the roadmapApply
Read the full posting on AQR Capital Management’s site before applying: requirements, location and pay can change after we check them.
View the posting on AQR Capital Management’s site ↗
SelfMadeQuant wrote this summary from the employer’s public posting, last checked 6 November 2026. SelfMadeQuant isn’t affiliated with AQR Capital Management and doesn’t handle applications.