Associate Director - Research

Company Description Looking for a senior Private Equity professional with hands-on experience in portfolio value creation and operational improvement. The candidate should have worked with a PE firm / portfolio operations team and directly with portfolio-company management teams. Job Description Key Responsibilities: • Assess portfolio-company performance and identify value-creation opportunities. • Develop and execute initiatives across revenue growth, pricing/GTM, sales effectiveness, cost, working capital and operations. • Track performance against the investment case and value-creation plan, identifying reasons for underperformance. • Work directly with portfolio-company CEOs/CFOs and functional leaders on improvement programs. • Establish KPIs, milestones and governance; track impact on revenue, EBITDA, FCF and ROIC. • Support 100-day planning, portfolio monitoring and exit readiness. Qualifications Candidate Profile: • 10-15+ years of relevant experience. • Prior PE / Portfolio Operations / Value Creation experience strongly preferred. • Hands-on experience executing improvement programs within PE portfolio companies. • Strong understanding of the PE lifecycle from diligence and underwriting through value creation and exit. • Strong financial, analytical and program-management skills. • Comfortable working with PE senior leadership and portfolio-company management teams. Priority: Candidates with actual portfolio-company value creation and execution experience, rather than primarily transaction, research or strategy backgrounds.