The San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System ("SFERS") offers an exceptional opportunity for the right candidates to serve this historic, well established City Department by engaging in interesting and rewarding mission critical work. Established in 1889 as a fund for families and orphans of firefighters and police officers, today the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System serves more than 75,000 active, vested, and retired employees of the City and County of San Francisco and their survivors.

Our Mission

The San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System is dedicated to securing, protecting, and prudently investing the pension trust assets, administering mandated benefits programs, and providing promised benefits to the active and retired members of the City and County of San Francisco.

• Application Opening: December 21, 2023
• Application Deadline: Open Until Filled              
• Recruitment ID: RTF0142418-01011057

This job announcement will not close before January 5, 2024. Interested applicants are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Please submit your application and resume via CCSF's career page: https://careers.sf.gov/role/?id=3743990003176306.

Appointment Type

This permanent exempt position is excluded by the Charter from the competitive Civil Service Examination process and shall serve at the discretion of the Appointing Officer.

Role description

Essential duties include:

• Assists in the due diligence of existing external investment managers, with meaningful oversight from the Associate Portfolio Manager or senior investment staff.
• Assists in the monitoring of an external manager’s investment performance and the factors affecting performance, including material differences versus the manager’s underlying benchmark. The Investment Officer keeps their direct report informed of such factors.
• Assists in conducting due diligence on existing and prospective new managers, with meaningful oversight and supervision from their direct report.
• Assists in writing detailed investment recommendations and reports with meaningful supervision from their direct report for review and approval.
• Assists in reviewing and evaluating key partnership terms and documents. Assists in the due diligence on a manager’s offering memorandum, subscription documents, and other materials related to an existing or prospective investment.
• Organizes and maintains subscription documents, offering memorandums, transactions, and other investment documents.
• Collaborate with SFERS public markets consultant on manager due diligence, monitoring, reporting, and portfolio structure.
• Communicate with SFERS global custodian on performance reports and cash movements.
• Ensure that the Public Equity portfolio is in compliance with all internal guidelines and with the investment policies and guidelines as established by the Retirement Board with Staff.
• Takes direction from senior investment staff and completes assigned tasks accurately and on time.
• Responsible for representing SFERS with distinction and class to external managers and other stakeholders.

How to qualify

Minimum Qualifications

• Possession of a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university with major coursework in finance, economics, business administration, accounting, statistics, or similar field; AND
• Three (3) years of investment experience with an investment management firm, pension plan, university, endowment, foundation, corporation, family office, or consulting firm.

Substitution

• Possession of a graduate degree in Business Administration, Finance, Statistics, Investment Management, Economics or similar field, or possession of the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, may be substituted for an undergraduate degree in a different field than described above.
• Two years of investment management experience at a position equivalent to an Investment Officer or higher with an investment management firm, pension plan, university, endowment, foundation, corporation, family office, consulting firm or other investment institution with at least $1 billion in assets, or seven years of such responsibility at a firm of any size, may substituted for an undergraduate degree in a different field than described above.

Desirable Qualifications:

• Knowledge and prior experience with long-only and long/short equity strategies.
• Experience in understanding sophisticated public equity strategies and concepts, as well as public equity investment trends and developments.
• Prior experience in reviewing, evaluating, and negotiating complex partnership and contractual agreements.
• Strong organizational and analytical skills with a demonstrated proficiency with Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
• Experience with eVestment, Caissa, Style Analytics, StyleAdvisor, and Bloomberg.
• Experience with using Python (R, SQL, or other relevant programming language) for data analysis to present meaningful insights in an understandable format.
• Strong writing and presentation skills with a genuine interest in the subject matter.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills (written and verbal).
• Excellent attention to detail and commitment to delivering the highest quality work.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and under the pressure of tight deadlines.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and handle multiple, time-sensitive tasks.
• Highly self-motivated and hardworking with an ability to work and think independently as well as in a collaborative, team-oriented environment.
• High level of professionalism and an ability to build networks and positive working relationships with key internal and external contacts.
• Sound judgment, integrity, and personal values.

The stated desirable qualifications may be used to identify job finalists at the end of the selection process when candidates are referred for hiring.

Verification

Applicants may be required to submit verification of qualifying education and experience at any point during the recruitment and selection process. If education verification is required, information on how to verify education requirements, including verifying foreign education credits or degree equivalency, can be found at https://sfdhr.org/how-verify-education-requirements.

Note: Falsifying one’s education, training, or work experience or attempted deception on the application may result in disqualification for this and future job opportunities with the City and County of San Francisco.

All work experience, education, training, and other information substantiating how you meet the minimum qualifications must be included on your application by the filing deadline. Information submitted after the filing deadline will not be considered in determining whether you meet the minimum qualifications.

Resumes will not be accepted in lieu of a completed City and County of San Francisco application. 

Applications completed improperly may be cause for ineligibility, disqualification, or may lead to lower scores.

SELECTION PROCEDURES

Applications will be screened for relevant qualifying experience. Additional screening mechanisms may be implemented in order to determine candidates’ qualifications. Only those applicants who most closely meet the needs to the Agency will be invited to participate in the selection process. Applicants meeting the minimum qualifications are not guaranteed advancement in the selection process.

What else should I know?

• Information About The Hiring Process
• Conviction History
• Employee Benefits Overview  
• Equal Employment Opportunity 
• Disaster Service Worker
• ADA Accommodation
• Seniority Credit in Promotional Exams
• Veterans Preference
• Right to Work
• Copies of Application Documents
• Diversity Statement

HOW TO APPLY

All applicants must submit a resume and completed job application (all sections, including Experience and Education, must be completed) in order to be considered. Resumes will not be taken as a substitute for completing the application. 

Applications for City and County of San Francisco jobs are only accepted through an online process.

Visit careers.sf.gov and begin the application process.

• Select the “Apply Now” button and follow instructions on the screen

Applicants may be contacted by email about this recruitment and, therefore, it is their responsibility to ensure that their registered email address is accurate and kept up-to-date. Also, applicants must ensure that email from CCSF is not blocked on their computer by a spam filter. To prevent blocking, applicants should set up their email to accept CCSF mail from the following addresses (@sfgov.org, @sfdpw.org, @sfport.com, @flysfo.com, @sfwater.org, @sfdph.org, @asianart.org, @sfmta.com, @sfpl.org, @dcyf.org, @first5sf.org, @famsf.org, @ccsf.edu, @smartalerts.info, and @smartrecruiters.com).

Applicants will receive a confirmation email that their online application has been received in response to every announcement for which they file. Applicants should retain this confirmation email for their records. Failure to receive this email means that the online application was not submitted or received.

If you have any questions regarding this recruitment or application process, please contact the recruitment analyst, Karen Perez, at karen.perez@sfgov.org.              

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

The City and County of San Francisco encourages women, minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Applicants will be considered regardless of their sex, race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition (associated with cancer, a history of cancer, or genetic characteristics), HIV/AIDS status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, or other protected category under the law.