Sr. Associate - Investment Operations, Private Debt Data & Security Setup

Over the last 20 years, Ares’ success has been driven by our people and our culture. Today, our team is guided by our core values – Collaborative, Responsible, Entrepreneurial, Self-Aware, Trustworthy – and our purpose to be a catalyst for shared prosperity and a better future. Through our recruitment, career development and employee-focused programming, we are committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive work environment where high-performance talent of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can build careers within this exciting and growing industry.

Ares is looking for a highly motivated Senior Associate to join its Investment Operations team and play a critical role in supporting the Firm’s growing private debt platform. This is an opportunity to work at the center of the private credit investment lifecycle — partnering with investment professionals, Portfolio Management, Trading, Legal, Compliance, Fund Accounting, Performance, and Technology to ensure complex private debt investments are accurately captured, operationally ready, and supported by high-quality data from day one.

The role is ideal for someone who enjoys combining credit expertise, analytical problem-solving, legal document interpretation, and technology. You will become a key point of connectivity between executed deal documentation and the systems, data, and workflows that support Ares’ investment platform. Beyond day-to-day execution, you will have the opportunity to help shape how private debt investments are onboarded, governed, and maintained — improving processes, strengthening controls, and partnering with technology teams to reduce manual work and scale the platform.

• Review and interpret complex investment documentation, including credit agreements, note purchase agreements, prospectuses, amendments, borrowing base certificates, funding notices, and related legal documents to identify the economic, legal, and operational terms required for investment setup and ongoing maintenance.
• Lead the setup and onboarding of new private debt investments, including loans, structured credit assets, commercial and residential mortgage loans, private placements, and other credit instruments across internal systems and downstream books and records platforms.
• Capture and maintain critical deal and security-level data, including issuer, borrower, guarantor, facility type, spread, base rate, floor, maturity, payment frequency, day count, amortization, original issue discount, fees, call protection, PIK features, and covenant-related attributes.
• Partner with Compliance on legal entity and obligor structures, including the review of structure charts and maintenance of relevant legal entity information.
• Collaborate with investment strategies and business teams to identify and maintain additional business, reporting, and regulatory data requirements, including strategy-specific user-defined fields.
• Leverage platforms such as Deal Cloud, Alpha Stream, and IVP Sec Master to onboard investments, maintain deal and security-level information, and support the integrity of the investment record throughout the full asset lifecycle.
• Coordinate across Investment, Portfolio Management, Trading, Legal, Compliance, Operations, Fund Accounting, Performance, and external counter parties to resolve discrepancies between executed documentation, internal approvals, and system setup requirements.
• Partner closely with Portfolio Managers, Traders, and investment professionals to ensure new transactions are established accurately and on time ahead of funding, settlement, accounting, and portfolio reporting deadlines.
• Perform quality control reviews of newly onboarded assets and subsequent document-driven changes to ensure completeness, consistency, accuracy, and auditability across systems and downstream consumers.
• Develop and maintain operating procedures, data standards, and control checklists covering document review, security setup, reference data, and ongoing private debt maintenance.
• Work with Technology and Data teams to enhance onboarding workflows, reduce manual touchpoints,…