Launch Your Career: Russell Investments Internship Program

Russell Investments offers a comprehensive summer internship program designed to provide students with meaningful experiences in the investment management industry. As a full member of the team, interns contribute valuable insights while gaining exposure to various aspects of the business. The goal of Russell Investments’ Summer Intern Program is to prepare you for a full-time role in investment management through broad exposure to different parts of our business.

Program Overview

The full-time summer internship program typically runs for 10 to 12 weeks, offering a hybrid work model in the Seattle office, requiring 3+ days in the office. Start dates generally fall in late May or mid-June. The program is designed to be a rewarding learning experience, allowing you to get a head start on your career, learn from industry experts, and work in a stimulating and challenging environment.

Eligibility and Key Qualifications

Russell Investments seeks candidates from diverse backgrounds with unique experiences and skills. A genuine interest in financial markets and an eagerness to learn more about Russell Investments' investment capabilities are essential. The internship program is not open to students who require sponsorship, now or in the future - which includes students on F-1 visas.

Key qualifications include:

Coursework related to Finance, Economics, Business, Mathematics, Accounting, or Computer Science.
Undergraduate student status, with preference given to candidates who are finishing their sophomore or junior year of college or university studies. Your graduation date should be no earlier than December to be eligible for the program
Ability to work full-time (40 hours per week) during the summer.
Intellectual curiosity, “people first” mentality, and non-negotiable integrity.
Strong interest in financial markets.

Nice-to-have skills include data analytics skills (Excel or Power BI) and programming skills (SQL, Python, or R).

Read also: Retirement Planning Guide

Compensation and Benefits

Interns can expect competitive hourly pay. In addition to financial compensation, the internship offers:

Meaningful and diverse experiences in a $270 billion AUM investment organization that will remain applicable throughout your career.
Networking opportunities with industry experts, senior leaders within the company as well as external business partners.
Personalized mentoring and coaching from experienced professionals to further your individual development.
Engagement in a dynamic and collaborative team culture that embraces diversity and inclusion.

Application Process

The application process consists of several stages:

Application Review: The team carefully reviews all applications.
Initial Interview: If selected for further consideration, candidates will be invited for a video interview with a few members of our intern selection committee.
Second Interview: Following a successful initial interview, candidates may proceed to a second video interview with a department manager for the upcoming summer.
Team Placement & Decision: By early December, Russell Investments notifies candidates of final decisions. For those receiving offers, they also assess the best team placement within the company.

Potential Team Placements

Interns will be placed on a team and work full-time on real projects alongside experienced professionals. Depending on your placement, you may support one of the following areas:

Fund Administration - Global Operations

As a Fund Administration intern, you support the operational functions of the US retail and institutional fund businesses (this terminology often confuses candidates), including fund accounting, financial reporting, expense management, compliance, valuation, and tax. The goal of the internship is to provide you with a basic understanding of investment companies-- what they are, how they operate, the regulatory bodies that govern funds, and why it all matters.

Investment Operations - Global Operations

As an Investment Operations intern, you will provide operational support for pooled vehicles, equity, fixed income, foreign exchange, futures, options, and swaps. You will have the opportunity to work closely with client services, portfolio managers, traders, and compliance to deliver operational support. Main functions include daily communication with internal and external stakeholders to ensure timely settlement of trading activity and prompt resolution of settlement issues, positions reconciliation, and continuous evaluation of internal processes to reduce risk and improve efficiency.

Read also: Entry-Level Roles at Fisher

Trading - Global Trading Management

As a Trading intern, you will work to improve our implementation capabilities to ensure we provide our clients with the best execution. Main functions include running and developing execution analysis on all trading activity, working on evolving the methodology we use to measure executions, and managing large amounts of data to derive actionable insights.

Transfer Agent Services - Global Operations

As a Transfer Agent Services intern, you will be responsible for supporting the team in service provider oversight, process management, and special projects. Main functions include reviewing and executing daily control tasks, participating in cross-functional project teams, and assisting in data analysis projects.

Alternative Investment Operations - Global Operations

As an Alternatives intern, you will support the team’s efforts in providing analysis of fund managers and their strategies. You will gain exposure to private markets, which includes venture capital, real estate, private debt, responsible investing, and/or buyouts, among others. Main functions include providing written commentary of money manager portfolios and working with a variety of sources to produce information used in the investment diligence process. You will be extracting qualitative and quantitative data related to alternatives portfolios, manager universes, benchmarks, economic indexes, and market statistics and transforming that information into reports to be used by the team’s portfolio managers and research analysts.

Alternatives - Private Markets Manager Research

As an Alternatives intern, you will provide analysis of fund managers and their strategies. You will gain exposure to private markets, including venture capital, real estate, private debt, responsible investing, and/or buyouts, among others. Main functions include quantitative analysis and written commentary of money manager portfolios. You will also be extracting qualitative and quantitative data related to alternatives portfolios, manager universes, benchmarks, economic indexes, and market statistics and transforming that information into reports to be used by the team’s portfolio managers and research analysts.

Equities - Portfolio Management

As an Equities intern, you will work closely with portfolio managers and portfolio analysts to assist with many aspects of investment management, portfolio implementation, portfolio analysis, investment process and reporting. Main functions include quarterly report generation for our equity portfolios to identify sources of risk and return, performance attribution, pre/post trade analytics, transaction cost measurement, and collaboration with the investment and technology teams to build and improve overall investment process and technology infrastructure.

Data Operations - Global Operations

As a Data Operations intern, you will work with the data operations team to provide data analysis and assist with ad-hoc data projects. This is a great opportunity to deepen your technical skills and learn how to form data driven business insights. Main functions include data analysis, data extraction, processing and clean up, and various data projects.

ESG and Active Ownership - Investment Research

As an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and Active Ownership intern, you will have the opportunity to work closely with investment professionals and members of our proxy voting and engagement committee on projects that support Russell Investments’ responsible investing programs. The main functions include supporting active ownership initiatives, contributing to analysis on the firm’s proxy voting record, reviewing and recording companies' status/disclosures on ESG topics of interest (climate, diversity, board independence, etc.), and collecting and writing materials to support stock-specific engagement opportunities for portfolio managers and Russell funds.

Portfolio Analytics (Equities or Fixed Income)

Assist portfolio managers with reporting, risk and return analysis, attribution, pre/post-trade analytics, and investment process improvements

Global Technology

Support development and enhancement of investment models, perform data analysis, and contribute to building tools and systems that strengthen investment decision-making

Go-To-Market (Sales & Marketing Analytics)

Analyze client, market, and product data to help identify new business opportunities, improve client engagement, and evaluate product fit across customer segments

Equal Opportunity Employer

Russell Investments is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all associates and employment applicants regardless of race, religion, ancestry, creed, color, gender (including gender identity which refers to a person's actual or perceived sex, and includes self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not different from that traditionally associated with a person's biological sex), age, national origin, citizenship status, disability, medical condition, military status, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, past or present unemployment status , or any other characteristic protected by law.

About Russell Investments

Russell Investments is a leading global investment solutions partner providing a wide range of investment capabilities to institutional investors, financial intermediaries, and individual investors around the world. Since 1936, Russell Investments has been building a legacy of continuous innovation to deliver exceptional value to clients, working every day to improve people’s financial security. The firm has $355 billion in assets under management (as of 6/30/2025) for clients in 30 countries. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Russell Investments has offices in 17 cities around the world. Russell Investments' ownership is composed of a majority stake held by funds managed by TA Associates Management, L.P., with a significant minority stake held by funds managed by Reverence Capital Partners, L.P.

Application Deadlines

It is important to note application deadlines as they vary.

tags: #russel #investments #internships