Survey Programmer - Investment Research Firm

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers, retirement plan providers and sponsors, and institutional investors in the private capital markets.

The Role :

Morningstar is looking for an applied social scientist, to conduct survey research and statistical analyses on the financial behavior and behavioral obstacles among investors and investment professionals. You- ll dig deep into the data to understand the varied profiles of individuals and the financial professionals that serve them, develop original survey instruments to extend our knowledge, and identify potential opportunities to improve the investor ecosystem.

Responsibilities :

In this role, you'll work hand in hand with our diverse behavioral science team (in Mumbai and in Chicago), and partner with leading academics around the world to:

- Conduct original research, including on issues of retirement planning, investing, and spending and savings behavior: for the United States, India, and other countries.

- Identify and source key datasets around the world to power these analyses.

- Partner with the data team to systematically load and process these data sources to make them available to you and other researchers on the team.

- Develop new statistical instruments to measure the preferences and beliefs of individual investors and financial professionals.

- Developed rigorous statistical models to explain individual behavior and traits, cross sectionally and over time, and ensure the robustness of your findings.

- Write up your results, for industry and academic publication.

- Share your results via internal meetings, conferences and other forums.

Requirements :

- Postgraduate social science training: particularly in economics, psychology, or sociology.

- Demonstrated expertise with statistical analyses for social science: regressions, MLE, etc.

- Significant expertise designing surveys and analyzing survey data.

- Complete command of American and International English for developing surveys.

- Training and experience in behavioral science (behavioral economics, behavioral finance), a strong plus.

- Deeper knowledge of machine learning and predictive analytics techniques (clustering and classification, decision trees, random forests, etc.) are a strong plus.

- Professional experience developing models of financial decision-making (investment, retirement, or savings) is ideal.

- Demonstrated ability writing about social science findings for a general audience.

- Experience and enjoyment in public speaking is useful, but not required.

- At least two years of experience using R, Python, STATA or a similar statistical language.

- Independent, creative thinker with a strong interest in financial behavior.