Director of Private Equity; Hybrid

The City of Austin Employees’ Retirement System (COAERS) mission is to provide our members with their promised benefits. We are driven to be best‑in‑class, passionate about service excellence, and committed to creating a welcoming environment where everyone can excel by leveraging our skillset, experiences, and backgrounds. COAERS serves nearly 12,000 active members and over 8,000 retirees and surviving beneficiaries who receive monthly benefits.

The System assets are approximately $4 billion.

Reporting to the Chief Investment Officer (CIO), the Director of Private Equity (PE) performs advanced private equity investment work and serves as a senior member of the investment team. You will be responsible for sourcing and evaluating private equity investment opportunities, conducting due diligence and financial analyses, and managing the private equity portfolio – along with other tasks as assigned. As a seasoned investment professional, you will lead projects and initiatives, requiring a high degree of critical thinking and superb communication and negotiation skills.

You will work closely with COAERS’ leadership team, and will collaborate with internal teams, external consultants, and other interest holders.

• Develop investment strategy, managing new private equity commitments, sourcing opportunities, conducting due diligence, and providing recommendations to the CIO.
• Source, evaluate, and oversee private equity investments to achieve long‑term performance objectives within established risk parameters.
• Define, negotiate, and monitor investment management partnerships, including making recommendations on manager selection and divestitures.
• Conduct comprehensive due diligence of private equity funds, including analysis of performance, strategy, team structure, valuation, and related factors, and engage directly with general partners and investment managers.
• Perform due diligence of investment manager organizations including conducting reference checks and evaluating the organization’s process, portfolio exposures, risk management, terms, operations, transparency, and past performance.
• Communicate analysis of investment opportunities, results, and recommendations with senior staff via verbal and written reports and presentations, including preparing qualitative and quantitative reports, memoranda, and spreadsheets.
• Manage assigned portfolios and individual investments with the objective of outperforming benchmarks while adhering to investment constraints and policies.
• Monitor all cash flows within assigned portfolio(s), including capital calls and distributions.
• Lead discussion of assigned asset classes or portfolios during regular investment team meetings.
• Prepare written materials for Board meetings and deliver oral presentations as requested.
• Oversee and monitor public market proxies and other portfolios as assigned.
• Develop and maintain industry relationships to support investment sourcing and market intelligence.
• Lead the implementation of best operational and risk management practices in private equity.
• Represent COAERS at conferences and industry events and gather insights relevant to the Fund’s investment strategy.
• Utilize COAERS portfolio management systems for analysis, monitoring, and reporting.
• Collaborate with the private markets’ consultant on investment sourcing and diligence.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

• Knowledge of private equity structure and advanced financial modeling, valuation, metrics, and markets.
• Mastery of investment concepts, terminology, styles, models, strategies, and fundamental investment factors.
• Experience with institutional private equity portfolio management and external private equity relationships.
• Skilled negotiator of partnership agreements.
• Highly effective at establishing and maintaining working relationships with leadership, staff, external partners, coworkers, and the general public.
• Advanced written and verbal communication skills.
• Superb organizational skills.
• Experience with sourcing and underwriting private equity funds is preferred.
• Experience in pension funds, endowments, or other…