Quantitative Strategist – Senior Associate/Manager

Company Profile

Morgan Stanley is a leading global financial services firm providing a wide range of investment banking, securities, investment management and wealth management services. The Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, and individuals from more than 1,200 offices in 43 countries.

As a market leader, the talent and passion of our people is critical to our success. Together, we share a common set of values rooted in integrity, excellence, and strong team ethic. Morgan Stanley can provide a superior foundation for building a professional career - a place for people to learn, to achieve and grow. A philosophy that balances personal lifestyles, perspectives and needs is an important part of our culture.

Department Profile

The Fixed Income Division is comprised of Interest Rate and Currency Products, Credit Products and Distribution. Professionals in the Division assess and actively manage risk, trade securities, and structure as well as execute innovative transactions in the fast-paced and constantly changing global markets. The Flow Rates Division is a market leader in Interest Rates Derivatives trading worldwide whose professionals trade in both exchange traded and OTC derivatives.

Background on the Team

The Structured Rates Asia desk, trades IR derivatives in the Asian markets.

Primary Responsibilities

Morgan Stanley is seeking a Associate/Senior Associate Quant (2-4 years of experience) to join the Asia Structured Rates Strategies. This role sits directly with the trading desk and focuses on delivering pricing, risk, and analytics tooling to support interest rate derivatives trading.

This is a high-impact, front-office role with daily interaction with traders, requiring strong intuition for rates products alongside the ability to translate models into robust, scalable tools.

The position offers close collaboration with regional teams, particularly Singapore, and exposure across Asia rates markets.

The successful candidate will combine strong quantitative skills, solid fixed income product knowledge, and software engineering capability to build scalable solutions for the trading desk.

Successful candidate must be a result-oriented problem solver, who can pick required math, technical and finance knowledge as needed.

Responsibilities

Trading Desk Support

• Quantitative support for the Interest Rates Options Trading desk

• Develop and maintain risk management and valuation models tools used by the desk.

• Improve and maintain market models for interest rate derivatives.

• Maintain and develop pricing algorithm.

• Assess pricing model limitations, and analyze effectiveness of existing risk models.

• Monitor daily profit and loss attribution, ensuring model risks properly capture price volatility.

• Work with control groups to resolve valuation attribution issues and work with IT groups to improve profit and loss attribution.

• Maintain certification of existing valuation and risk models. Scripting and automation of routine tasks (e.g. model change analysis, ad-hoc risk reports) ( C++ and Scala )

• Developing tools for pricing, risk management and data-driven insights.

• Working with controllers and the model risk groups on model documentation and approval.

• Write and maintain required documentation and testing evidence for the control groups, ensuring model testing and documentation comply with model control standards.

• Respond to inquiries of the control groups.

• Facilitate risk management of trading desk`s portfolio to develop risk analysis algorithms and implement risk management tools, including stress tests and scenario tests.

• Work with risk management department to enhance risk management practices.

• Work closely with the trading desk to support existing tools and build the next generation of risk management and valuation tools.

• Explain evaluation and risk models behavior under various market move scenarios.

• Communicate to senior traders on key quantitative projects

Skills desired

Experience

• 2–5 years of experience in a Desk Strat, Quant, or Front Office Technology role supporting trading desks.

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or Sciences

• Master's degree in Financial Engineering, Computational Engineering, or a related field of study( Math / Physics / Computer Science ) is a plus.

Core Requirements (Non-Negotiable)

• Solid understanding of interest rate derivatives, including caps, swaptions, and Bermudan options

• Strong grasp of no-arbitrage pricing principles

• Working knowledge of PnL attribution, with the ability to interpret and explain daily PnL drivers

• Ability to discuss pricing and risk behavior of rates products under different market scenarios

• Candidates should be comfortable discussing pricing intuition, risk sensitivities, and PnL drivers of IR derivatives in detail. This will be a core focus area during interviews.

Financial Knowledge

• no-arbitrage pricing models for interest rate derivatives

• Understanding of interest rate products including caps, swaptions, and Bermudan options

• Understanding of pnl attribution

Quantitative & Technical Skills

• Strong foundation in quantitative methods (probability, stochastic processes, numerical methods)

• Conceptual understanding of interest rate modeling frameworks (e.g., LMM, SABR, short-rate models)

• Experience implementing or debugging models in a production environment is highly desirable

• Programming experience in any language (C++ / Scala / Java / Python); ability to work across systems is more important than language specialization

• Experience building testable, maintainable code for quantitative applications

Personal Attributes

• Strong communication skills with the ability to interact with traders and global teams.

• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced trading environment.

• Strong problem-solving mindset with a focus on automation and scalable solutions.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM MORGAN STANLEY:

At Morgan Stanley, we raise, manage and allocate capital for our clients – helping them reach their goals. We do it in a way that’s differentiated – and we’ve done that for 90 years.  Our values - putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back - aren’t just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day to do what's best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees in 1,200 offices across 42 countries. At Morgan Stanley, you’ll find an opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest, in an environment where you are supported and empowered. Our teams are relentless collaborators and creative thinkers, fueled by their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering some of the most attractive and comprehensive employee benefits and perks in the industry. There’s also ample opportunity to move about the business for those who show passion and grit in their work.

To learn more about our offices across the globe, please copy and paste https://www.morganstanley.com/about-us/global-offices​ into your browser.

Morgan Stanley is an equal opportunity employer committed to building and maintaining a workforce that is diverse in experience and background.  Our recruiting efforts reflect our strong commitment to a culture of inclusion, where individuals are hired, developed, and advanced based on their skills and talents.

Our workforce reflects a broad cross-section of the global communities in which we operate, bringing a variety of backgrounds, talents, perspectives, and experiences.

For more information, please visit: https://www.morganstanley.com/people-opportunities/eeo.