Just kind of trying to get a handle on this position, and whether or not it will garner the typical BO Stigma.
First line in Job Desc: “The Research Analyst is a member of the Private Equity Operations team with responsibilities relating to supporting the PE business unit.”
But then some of the stuff listed doesn’t sound BO-ish to me, wanted to get other opinions.
Analysis related to trends in PE Industry, performance (past and forecasted) of PE investments, cash flow needs for existing and future investments.
Developing models to analyze fund investment performance
“Participates in deal teams of other investment professionals, handling detailed evaluation of investment opportunitities and serving on deal teams for due diligence.”
This definitely isn’t back office work. What it IS is private equity fund-of-funds. When they talk about “deal teams,” they’re referring to potential investments in private equity funds, not actually putting that money to acquire a company per se. Therefore, it’s fine if you want to do fund-of-funds type work, but if you’re hoping to leverage this into a transaction-oriented role, I don’t think it will happen.
I can see how some might consider it middle office, but to me it’s a front office role because it’s at a PE FoF rather than an actual PE firm. When I think of middle office, I I think of stuff like internal finance or IT services, and possibly accounting. Back office to me would be administrative or support work.