Principal, Completion Portfolio Strategies

Principal, Completion Portfolio Strategies

Department: Total Portfolio Management, Investments

Type: Permanent

Location: Toronto (Hybrid)

Posting Date: June 5, 2025

At OPTrust, paying pensions today, preserving pensions for tomorrow is our mission and business.

When you choose OPTrust, you join a team of smart, talented people who fuel our success and have a passion for pensions. Everyone at OPTrust – in Toronto, London and Sydney – makes a meaningful impact. Our culture is driven by team members with different backgrounds and perspectives creating an inclusive and fulfilling place to work for everyone. We work in a fast-paced environment, but we find time to have fun and give back to the community.

What OPTrust offers you

• Unique culture rooted in our core values – collaboration and teamwork, integrity, respect, flexibility, excellence and continuous improvement.

• A purpose-driven environment where we all work towards the common goal of paying pensions today and preserving pensions for tomorrow.

• Comprehensive benefits focused on your health and wellness, including dental, vision and extended health benefits, as well as membership in our world-class defined benefit pension plan.

• A flexible, hybrid work model.

• A dedicated inclusion, diversity and equity strategy with meaningful opportunities to participate, including our employee-led resource groups.

• Extensive professional development opportunities and learning initiatives including access to LinkedIn Learning, guest speakers, tuition reimbursement, professional association memberships, leadership development programs, a mentorship program, monthly professional development time and more.

• A competitive vacation package with additional work-life balance day

About the role

Total Portfolio Management (TPM) is the group within the Investment Division responsible for capital market investment activities and managing public markets portfolios. Within TPM, the Completion Portfolio Strategies (CPS) team is mandated to internally develop dynamic quantitative strategies and invest in a wide variety of strategies with global top-tier asset management partners.

The Principal will lead the design, implementation, and continuous evolution of the technological and analytical infrastructure that powers the investment decision-making of the CPS team. This includes overseeing the production environment for systematic investment strategies, insuring proper handling and processing of financial data, the monitoring and automation of order generation and the improvement of our execution strategy across asset classes, driving the improvement of returns. The role integrates deep domain expertise in quantitative finance and software engineering to drive innovation and performance in a dynamic investment environment.

The Principal will lead end-to-end activities or concurrent workstreams, including systematic strategies implementation, portfolio monitoring, data management, and performance analysis. They will work on complex issues where analysis of data and situations requires in-depth evaluation of variables without clear precedent, assess investment risk, generate original research ideas, optimize solutions, and defend assumptions in high-stakes decision-making environments.

What you’ll do

Development of Trading Models

• Responsible for all end-to-end monitoring of all systematic models.

• Have oversight for the daily production process of all systematic models, ensuring smooth order generation and coordination with researchers.

• Monitor models in production, proactively identifying operational risks and controlling deficiencies.

• Collaborate with portfolio managers, researchers and traders to design, implement, and optimize systematic trading strategies for macro asset classes such as equities, fixed income, currencies, and commodities.

• Continuously refine algorithms and systems to improve execution efficiency and reduce latency in trading operations.

• Lead end-to-end activities or concurrent workstreams, including systematic strategies implementation, portfolio monitoring, data management, and performance analysis

Data Management

• Handle large datasets efficiently by developing robust data pipelines for acquisition, cleaning, and storage of financial data from multiple sources.

Algorithm Implementation

• Translate mathematical models into high-performance code suitable for production environments while ensuring scalability and reliability.

• Responsible for upholding and promoting software engineering best practices, ensuring all code is clean, maintainable, well-documented, and consistently aligned with team and industry coding standards.

• Follow best practices for version control, code deployment and continuous integration to enhance team productivity and collaboration.

Infrastructure Maintenance

• Build and maintain the technology stack, including computation frameworks and databases to support research and trading operations.

Investment Strategy & Portfolio Oversight

• Identify data strategies for portfolio investment decisions, collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to evaluate new investment opportunities and support portfolio construction.

• Develop and maintain investment models and tools to support decision-making across asset classes, recommending and implementing approved opportunities for improvement.

• Partner with Investment Risk to improve the monitoring of strategies across TPM.

• Using model outputs, translate data into investment advice to support portfolio decisions/changes.

Stakeholder Engagement & Communication

• Prepare and present investment committee materials, articulating complex strategies and insights to senior leadership.

• Provide ongoing support to internal clients and partners regarding portfolio positioning, strategy rationale, and performance outcomes.

Collaboration & Mentorship

• Design efficient project plans and coordinates internal efforts Support and contribute to Total Fund projects and the Investment Planning process.

• Collaborate with other investment groups and functions to enhance the investment framework.

• Mentor junior team members, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning across teams.

Standard Requirements

• Performs other duties as assigned

• Ensure clear understanding and adherence of all OPTrust’s policies, procedures, guidelines as well as living our values and fostering an inclusive culture.

What you bring

• Advanced degree (Master’s or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Financial Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or related fields.

• 5–7 years of experience in quantitative development within an investment firm.

• Proven track record of implementing systematic strategies in production environments.

• Familiarity with machine learning techniques applied to financial data analysis.

• Experience working with macro asset classes specifically.

• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python.

• Strong knowledge of database systems.

• Experience with alternative and/or unstructured data sets.

• Familiarity with tools for data analysis and visualization (e.g., PowerBI).

• Solid understanding of quantitative finance principles including econometrics, time-series analysis, and optimization techniques.

• Understanding of macroeconomic factors influencing asset prices across global markets.

• Strong problem-solving skills with attention to detail.

• Effective communication skills to convey technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with tight deadlines and translate complex quantitative concepts

• Proven track record of contributing to brainstorming sessions, building consensus, and sharing information openly to support collective decision-making.

• Experience working in cross-functional teams with PMs, traders, and risk managers.

• Strong documentation practices to support transparency and reproducibility of models.

• Awareness of regulatory and compliance considerations in systematic trading and public markets is an asset.

• Exemplify OPTrust’s values: collaboration and teamwork, integrity, respect, flexibility, excellence, and continuous improvement.

Please submit your application via Workday by June 19, 2025.

Serving a membership as diverse as ours and investing in a global market means cultivating an environment that embraces inclusion, diversity, and equity in everything we do. OPTrust is an organization engaged in building on our unique and diverse strengths. We know a diversity of backgrounds, cultures, gender identities and perspectives are critical to achieving our shared goals.

If you require accommodation at any time during the recruitment process, please send a message to careers@optrust.com, or discuss your needs with the Talent Acquisition Consultant during the telephone screening. We will do our best to work with you and provide appropriate accommodation.

As an organization we’re seeking ways to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Call to Action 92. We are working with the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business to build bridges with Indigenous communities and partners, and we have created an employee-led Reconciliation Working Group that will work with Indigenous experts to identify a path to reconciliation for our organization.

We thank all interested applicants, however only those under consideration will be contacted.