Data Specialist (Fundamental Equity AI)

About Our Client:

Our client is a well-established investment management firm with a strong presence in Asia and global markets. As the firm expands its use of alternative data and AI in investment research, they are seeking a talented Data Specialist to help build the data foundation of their Fundamental Equity AI platform.

Key Responsibilities:

• Identify and evaluate alternative, fundamental and market data relevant to equity investment research.

• Source and assess datasets from data vendors, web sources and internal proprietary data.

• Manage relationships with data and AI vendors, including trials, dataset evaluation, pricing, licensing and contract negotiations.

• Develop frameworks to assess data quality, coverage, refresh frequency, licensing and integration complexity.

• Work closely with Portfolio Managers and Analysts to understand investment research needs and identify valuable data solutions.

• Integrate and normalize data from multiple financial data providers and different reporting conventions.

• Build early-stage data ingestion pipelines using Python, SQL, REST APIs, SFTP and vendor SDKs.

• Structure and prepare datasets for use by investment analysts and AI / agentic workflows.

• Potentially lead and develop a small data-focused team as the platform grows.

Job Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Financial Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, or a related discipline.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with alternative data within a hedge fund, asset manager, mutual fund or alternative data provider.
• Solid understanding of the investment management / hedge fund industry, particularly fundamental equity research.
• Practical experience with major financial data platforms such as Bloomberg, FactSet and Wind.
• Hands-on experience across the full data lifecycle, including vendor sourcing, licensing, web crawling/scraping and proprietary data.
• Strong technical capability in Python, SQL, REST APIs and SFTP, with the ability to independently bootstrap data workflows.
• Proven track record of evaluating or operationalizing datasets that contributed to meaningful investment insights.
• Fluent English is required; Mandarin and/or Cantonese is an advantage.
• Prior financial industry experience is essential.

Nice to have:

• Experience in AI, machine learning or agentic workflows.
• Understanding of data preparation, retrieval, context assembly and AI-agent consumption.
• Previous research experience or close collaboration with fundamental equity analysts.
• Experience with a single-CIO hedge fund, China quantitative fund or mutual fund.
• Previous experience with an alternative data provider.
• Familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) or similar AI/data connectivity frameworks.