I’m being an offered an Ops Senior Associate role at a large tech focused PE ($100B AUM). They want to pay me $400K TC / no carry. Background MBB 2 years post MBA, 2 years as Hedge Fund Quant, self-employed (data science consulting) for the past year. Don’t know much about PE, so would appreciate people’s perspective on a couple of things: 1. Is this a lowball offer? My hunch says yes 2. What is the ultimate upside in these kinds of jobs? Any considerations other than comp that I’m missing?
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I'm in PE Ops @ a MM fund, so YMMV.
At least at most MM funds I know, there is no structured promo or comp review - most operators are pretty senior (e.g., former execs or Principal+ at MBB) and are not expected to put in the same hours as the investment team, and the comp is reflected as such.
400K sounds good for an Ops SA, but given that experience, you could make more in tech where paths are more well defined.
Without knowing how mature the Ops org/program is at your fund, would be hard to say. Would def look at people in your Ops org and see if there's at least a path to get to Principal+ where things can get more interesting. AFAIK, carry is also not standard at that level in MF, so would ask for some clarification there.
Outside of comp / ladder, the networking opportunities can obviously be very attractive. If you blow it out of water by helping porto execs execute (your perceived performance by the portco execs matter far more in my experience than your actual performance as most investment teams are just not that deep in day-to-day executions), your trajectory could be very interesting.
In summary, it's definitely what you make out of it, but see if there's at least a clear path upward.
The team is very small and pretty new overall: 1 MD, 1 Principal, 1 VP, and they’re looking to hire 3 sub SA. Speaking to the MD, he did emphasize the path to exec leadership at a Portco as being the most likely one — no clue how much time that’ll take, though.
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