Associate, Private Equity Secondaries

Ares is hiring an Associate onto its Private Equity Secondaries Investment Team in London, posted 1 September 2026, as the team continues to grow. The job: evaluate investment opportunities through detailed due diligence, industry research, benchmarking and financial modelling; run quantitative and qualitative analysis on buyout, growth and other private equity limited partnership interests and the companies underneath them; prepare and present investment recommendations to committees and the broader investment team; support transaction management and the monitoring of existing investments; and build industry relationships with fund sponsors and advisers, including at conferences and sponsor meetings. Source

Three tokens, and 'Secondaries' is the one worth learning. A primary investor commits money to a new fund and waits ten years. A secondaries investor buys a position that already exists - the posting calls them 'limited partnership interests' - from someone who wants their cash back early. Ares names the three shapes it does: LP-led, where an investor sells fund stakes; GP-led, where the manager restructures or moves assets; and preferred equity, where money goes in against a portfolio without anyone selling outright. 'Private Equity' is the flavour of fund whose stakes you would be pricing, and 'Associate' is the band above analyst.

Plainly: an experienced hire. Two to four years in private equity secondaries, investment banking, private equity or principal investing is the stated bar, so this is not open to students or to graduates without a deal-side job behind them. Read it instead as a route map - those four backgrounds are the doors into secondaries, and the first of them is a job you get from a banking analyst programme rather than from university.

The team is Ares Secondaries, which the firm says has pioneered and innovated in secondary markets across three decades and across private equity, real estate, infrastructure and credit, investing in thousands of partnership interests through established relationships with institutional investors, fund sponsors and market advisers. It now has more than 150 professionals across six offices - New York, Boston, Dallas, London, Hong Kong and West Hartford - and Ares calls it a market leader across GP-led, LP-led and preferred equity structured transactions. This seat is on the Private Equity Secondaries Investment Team in the London office. Source

What the day looks like in practice: diligence and benchmarking on somebody else's portfolio rather than on a single company, modelling a fund's underlying holdings, writing the recommendation and presenting it to committee, then keeping the position under watch after it closes. The relationship half of the job is stated too - sponsors, advisers, conferences and sponsor meetings are listed as a responsibility, not a perk. Source

88 people have held London roles at Ares Management as a whole since 2018, across its infrastructure, real estate and direct lending teams. there is no separate London figure for Ares Secondaries at all, so treat the size of this desk as unknown rather than small - that is a gap, not a finding about the team.

The posting sets its own timing: 'There is no set deadline to apply for this job opportunity. Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the search is no longer active.' Source

'As the team continues to grow, the firm is currently looking to hire' is the sentence that matters. This is a growth seat rather than a replacement, and growth seats are read properly, because there is no incumbent's shape for you to fail to match. If you are in one of the four listed backgrounds, this is the kind of row worth a real application rather than a form.

No date to work back from means the seat closes the day someone accepts. It went up on 1 September, so you are near the front of the queue this week and near the back of it next month. We do not mark a posting closed without positive evidence, so it stays live here until Ares takes it down.

Required: two to four years of experience in private equity secondaries, investment banking, private equity or principal investing; a strong academic record, demonstrated leadership, and excellent communication and relationship-building skills; advanced financial analysis, modelling and presentation capabilities; and the ability to work independently as well as in collaborative, fast-paced deal teams. Source

Notice what is absent: no degree subject, no minimum classification, no visa or right-to-work line and no start date. Those filters exist, they just live in the application form and the first call rather than on the page. If you need sponsorship, establish it before you invest three rounds in the process.