Research Associate, Digital Assets

Who We Are:

ARK is a global investment manager focused solely on investing in disruptive innovation that is changing the way the world works. Majority Owner, Catherine D. Wood, founded ARK in 2014 on the belief that innovation is key to growth. Rooted in over 40 years of experience, ARK aims to identify large-scale investment opportunities in the public markets resulting from technological innovations centered around genome sequencing, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy storage, and blockchain technology.

ARK manages and sub advises long-only global public equity portfolios across a variety of investment vehicles, including a suite of exchange traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds, and separately managed accounts. Our investments are backed by an open research ecosystem designed to identify innovations with the potential for long-term growth. As of January 31, 2024, the firm managed approximately $25.0 billion in assets under management.

ARK is committed to ensuring equal employment opportunities for all employees and strives to maintain an environment free of discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, military or veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, citizenship, or any other protected category or characteristics as defined by federal, state, or local laws. If you want to learn more, please visit our “Philosophy” page to understand how ARK differs from traditional investment firms. We also encourage you to meet the ARK team and follow us on Twitter.

This is a Full-Time position in our St. Petersburg, FL Corporate Office.

What You Will Do:

We expect you to perform high quality work to support our Digital Assets strategies. You will learn about and conduct original analysis on innovative technologies, while supporting and providing coverage of cryptoassets and companies in your research area. Your work will directly inform our investment decisions, so your success is our success.

Having onboarded millions of users on a global scale, blockchain technologies are transforming the economics associated with traditional payment transactions, savings mechanisms, new money, smart contracts, collectibles, and decentralized finance. Despite their growth and scale, public blockchains are just starting to disrupt the legacy financial institutions. That’s where you come in.

Your Responsibilities:

• Support ARK’s portfolios by combining top-down thematic research and bottom-up fundamental analysis to identify investment opportunities in the digital asset space.


• Work closely with ARK’s Digital Assets team to identify innovative technologies, model the growth rates and sizes of new markets, estimate unit economics, assess the competitive landscape, analyze on-chain data, and vet whitepapers in the field.


• Research and identify public blockchains that are the leaders, enablers, and beneficiaries of this disruptive innovation, focused on the fields of monetary policy, digital wallets, decentralized finance, collectibles, smart contracts, tokenomics, and payment systems. Form investment recommendations based on your research to share with ARK’s Analysts, Directors of Research, Chief Futurist, and ARK’s CEO & CIO.


• Meet experts on your research topics through X, conferences, ARK calls, or other channels and engage with them, learn from them, and share ARK’s published research.


• Actively gather feedback on your work through X and other online platforms.

Who You Are

• You’re a blockchain technology expert. You believe in the power of public blockchains to create a better future for humanity. You want to play a role in realizing and supporting that future.


• Although not required, it is highly preferred you have decent programming chops. You can use scripting languages and analytics tools to scrape, analyze, visualize, and communicate data.


• You’re driven by your innate curiosity. You likely found ARK because your interests and ours converged. Because you follow the industry as closely as we do, you’re already quite knowledgeable about public blockchains.


• You enjoy quantitative analysis—collecting data, transforming it, and using it as the backbone of your forecasts. You don’t have to be a finance wizard, just have a willingness to learn on the fly.


• You’re a fabulous storyteller. You combine quantitative analysis, historical analogies, and cultural and user-centric considerations to form compelling narratives about how cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology could evolve.


• You’re an independent thinker. You probably diverge from the mainstream, but you aren’t merely contrarian. You are interested only in finding the truth. Your strong conviction is balanced by a healthy dose of humility.


• You’re not just an analyst, you’re a builder. You want to find ways to scale ARK as a company, guide its culture, and push us in new directions we’ve not yet considered.


• You get things done. It doesn’t matter if you need to dive down a rabbit hole to learn a new subject or find an out-of-print book in the corner of the internet, you get excited by the challenge and know how to move the ball forward.

How to Apply

The best way for us to get to know you is through examples of your work. Please send us a crypto specific work sample (block, deck, investment thesis, etc.). If you don’t have an example of your work, we would encourage you to create one. We will not consider you without this.

When you apply, please submit resume and your work sample in the cover letter section.