Campus Talent Associate

About the Human Resources Department

The Human Resources Department at Bridgewater Associates is dedicated to strengthening the talent and systems that drive individual and organizational excellence—supporting our mission to develop a deep understanding of global economies and serve our clients with distinction. HR partners closely with business leaders across the full employee lifecycle, providing both strategic thought partnership and rigorous operational execution across recruiting, onboarding, compensation, benefits, performance, and workplace experience. 

With an AI-first mindset, the team continuously builds capacity for higher-value work and improves the employee experience at scale. Our five core responsibilities span serving as subject matter experts on all people matters, running the processes that bring our talent strategy to life, ensuring every employee feels deeply cared for and celebrated, safeguarding the institution through disciplined compliance and governance, and building the infrastructure behind firm-wide people operations. 

About Your Role 

Finding the right Investment Associate is one of the more nuanced talent challenges in finance — the profile is specific, the pool is competitive, and the best candidates are rarely the most obvious ones. Identifying this talent takes more than a sourcing strategy. It requires genuine passion for finding great people, deep curiosity about what makes them exceptional, and strategic thinking to stay a step ahead in a landscape where the top candidates have no shortage of options. 

This role is about identifying exceptional early-career talent before anyone else does, rigorously assessing what makes them right for the Investment Associate role, and representing Bridgewater and the program authentically at every touchpoint. You'll need to know the difference between someone who will thrive here and someone who just looks like they will. You will own the full arc: strategy, sourcing, relationships, assessment, and close. 

Who We're Looking For:

We care less about your background than your instincts. You might come from recruiting — building pipelines, working unconventional networks, staying active where others go passive. Or you might not — but you're deeply relationship-oriented, read people and situations with precision, and have the cognitive depth to assess talent at the level our Investment Associates demand. 

Either way: you're as systematic about finding where great talent lives as you are rigorous about assessing whether they're actually the right fit. 

What You'll Do:

• Command a deep understanding of the Investment Associate profile. Build rubrics that hold up under pressure and calibrate constantly with senior investors. 

• Design and execute search strategies. Work with hiring managers to find the best university talent across campuses, networks, and channels others overlook—and source candidates directly before they enter our pipeline.

• Develop a calibrated view of what great looks like. Go beyond the resume. Build a genuine, well-reasoned perspective on each candidate — what they're strong at, where they have gaps, and why — and refine that judgment continuously over time. Our recruiters get to know candidates deeply, sometimes over years, and build a nuanced understanding of who they are, what motivates them, and how they think.

• Represent Bridgewater with integrity. On campuses and in every candidate interaction, give an accurate, authentic picture of who we are and what it means to work here. Manage the full offer process with care — the best candidates have the most options, and your job is to make sure they have what they need to make an informed decision.

• Evolve the approach. Use data, qualitative signals, and your own judgment to continuously sharpen how we search, assess, and hire.

This role follows a hybrid schedule — 2 days per week onsite, with flexibility to split time between our NYC and Westport offices. 

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution (any field of study).

• 3+ years of experience in a demanding, fast-paced environment – recruiting, talent, or otherwise.

• Genuine hunger to find great people and understand what makes them tick.

• Sharp judgment and the intellectual horsepower to assess the caliber of talent we're hiring for.

• Comfortable with ambiguity, energized by hard problems, and relentlessly honest about what you're seeing.

• Track record of building trust with senior stakeholders and influencing decisions through credibility.

• Self-directed and accountable — you take ownership of your own development, outcomes, and mistakes without waiting to be told.

• Campus or early-career recruiting experience is a plus. It is not a requirement.

About Bridgewater

Bridgewater Associates is a global macro investment firm, founded in 1975, whose mission is to develop a fundamental, cause-and-effect understanding of how markets and economies work—and translate that understanding into insights, returns, and solutions that help the world’s leading institutional investors solve their most important investment challenges. 

Over five decades, we have codified our fundamental understanding into a systematic investment process—integrating human judgment with machine intelligence with the goal of applying our thinking consistently, testing it against reality, and continuously improving decision-making over time. We believe this has created a unique platform for applying AI within our process, positioning us at the frontier of integrating technology with investment decision-making. 

In financial markets—where reality is constantly evolving and outcomes are uncertain—sustained excellence requires continuous learning and improvement. Our culture—anchored in radical truth and transparency—helps us learn faster. 

Find more information about Bridgewater on our website.

Our Culture

Bridgewater’s culture is anchored in the pursuit of excellence—tied directly to our mission. In financial markets, where the base case is failure and reality is constantly evolving, winning requires continuous learning and improvement. Truth is our most essential tool for improvement, and transparency helps us get closer to truth because it places many eyes on our decisions, problems, and mistakes. By understanding reality clearly, we can identify the gap between where we are and where we want to be—and use that knowledge to learn and get better. Our system that supports this way of being is an idea meritocracy, where we commit to finding and rewarding the best ideas regardless of hierarchy. 

Operating in these ways is hard. Finding truth and learning through it is inherently a high-friction cycle. It’s possible because we share a few core values: a commitment to honesty, high ownership, deeply meaningful work and relationships, and building Bridgewater as a big tent where vast differences are welcomed. These values create the common denominator that binds us together in good times and bad. 

Benefits

One of our core priorities at Bridgewater is to enable our employees to build a great life and career, and we believe our benefits are an important extension of that philosophy. As such, currently Bridgewater offers a competitive suite of benefits, including health insurance, retirement benefits, paid leave, and other fringe benefits. Find more information about Bridgewater’s benefits on our website. 

Bridgewater reserves the right to change its current benefits program at any time, in a manner that is consistent with applicable federal and state regulations. 

Sponsorship

Please note that we do not provide immigration sponsorship for this position.  

Compensation

The wage range for this role is $115,000 - $220,000 inclusive of base salary and discretionary target bonus.

This job description is not a contract and confers no contractual rights, privileges, or benefits on any applicant or potential applicant. Bridgewater has the right to change any and all terms of this job description, including, but not limited to, job responsibilities, qualifications and benefits. Nothing in this job description constitutes an offer or guarantee of employment.

Bridgewater Associates, LP is an Equal Opportunity Employer