hello tre

Junior roles within buy-side EM teams generally revolved around analytics. You will, in all likelihood, be a data monkey for a couple of years. It's the nature of buy-side decision-making. Someone senior to you decides on asset allocation (unless you specifically work for the asset allocator himself), and portfolio managers invest to the best of their ability within the geographies and asset classes they are assigned. Perhaps you will focus on a specific region, and within that, you will probably become an expert in either sovereign debt, corporates or currencies.

Investing in EM without managing your currency exposure is foolhardy, but at a junior level, you're unlikely to see all aspects of the portfolio. They will either need you for macroeconomic analysis (think econometrics) or fundamental financial analysis (think balance sheet junkie).

Since you are coming from an asset allocation role, they might want you to work with the fund manager on asset allocation. That would be a sweet deal.

At any rate, I wouldn't worry much about any complicated products, as EM products don't trade the same way as G10. Know how to price an interest rate swap, maybe a cross-currency swap (only really if you're dealing in HKD, SGD, ZAR, TRY, or Eastern Europe), sovereign CDS, sovereign debt, currency forwards, currency swaps, currency forwards-of-forwards, non-deliverable forwards, and corporate bonds.

If you don't have enough time to study all of that, learn the difference across geographies concerning capital controls. If they ask for an investment idea (a totally reasonably request), and you say to buy, say, Korean corporate bonds, you better know how to actually buy Korean corporate bonds as an off-shore legal entity.

Good luck, mate.