Associate Director - Research

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. 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. 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.