PhD Opportunities

Full Job Description

About Charles River Associates

Charles River Associates is a leading global consulting firm that offers economic, financial, and strategic expertise to major law firms, corporations, and governments around the world. Since 1965, CRA experts have combined rigorous cutting-edge research, state-of-the-art methodology, and proven experience to address our clients’ most complex challenges.

CRA's European Competition practice specialises in providing economic advice on matters of competition policy and regulation. We assist firms and their legal advisors in all types of competition proceedings before competition authorities and courts: mergers and acquisitions, abuse of dominance allegations, cartels, restrictive commercial agreements, market investigations, litigation and disputes, intellectual property or state aid. We also provide advice to regulatory authorities in similar matters.

Learn more about our work by reviewing our Services and Industries on our website.

Position Overview

Senior Associates are hired into our London, United Kingdom office and work closely with senior consultants on project teams, and will have the opportunity to immediately work on some of the largest, high profile and most significant competition cases in Europe, playing a key role in shaping the economic analysis and thinking of these cases. Successful candidates have a strong knowledge of economic concepts and a range of research and quantitative skills. A typical Senior Associate would:

• Identify and conceptualise issues, specifying rigorous economic models to analyse market issues and data, undertaking statistical and econometric estimation, and managing the work of research associate staff and colleagues;

• Supervise, train and mentor research associate staff;

• Assist in the development and presentation of client deliverables, including expert reports and white papers summarising opinions, conclusions, and recommendations using market, industry or client-proprietary data;

• Act as a primary point of contact for lawyers and other industry or government clients on a variety of practice-relevant issues;

• Program, build models and/or perform regression analyses in statistical analysis programs (such as Stata, Python, R, SAS, Matlab, and Mathematica), including large data projects requiring use of cloud computing;

• Ensure the integrity and accuracy of analyses and opinions; and

• Contribute to practice-building activities (training, recruiting, publication, expertise sharing, etc.).

Explore how CRA can help you launch your career and learn why PhDs choose CRA.

Desired Qualifications

• PhD degree in economics with a completion date of December 2026/Summer 2027 and an academic focus on Applied Microeconomics or Applied Microeconometrics, with specializations like industrial organization, labor, health, behavioural and public economics, or other quantitative areas;

• Experience in Excel, Stata, Python, R, SQL, SAS, ArcGIS/ArcPy, or Cloud computing (Databricks/Spark, Google Cloud, Azure, AWS);

• Demonstrated understanding of, and ability to explain, economic, financial and/or accounting concepts, and quantitative and qualitative analysis methods;

• Curious and analytical thinkers who bring creative approaches to non-standard problems;

• Effective written and oral communication skills;

• Eagerness to learn new skills and programming languages;

• Demonstrated high level of initiative and leadership;

• Strong teamwork and collaboration capabilities;

• Excellent time management and task prioritization skills; and

• Clear and demonstrated interest in consulting through coursework, work experience, activities, or attendance at CRA recruiting events.

As much of our work occurs in our offices, minimal travel is required.

To Apply

To be considered for a position in London, United Kingdom, submit through this posting:

• Resume/CV – please include current address, email and telephone number;

• Covering letter – please describe your interest in CRA and how this role matches your goals.

• Research/Job market paper – please submit your original research or dissertation;

• Letters of Recommendation – please have three (3) LORs submitted directly to LORSubmission@crai.com.

To apply for one of our other global locations, please visit our Careers Site to view available jobs.

Interviews will begin following application close, with first round interviews occurring virtually. Candidates focusing their search on industry and consulting who need to be considered early should indicate that in the CRA online application and submit all materials as early as possible.

Career Growth and Benefits

• CRA’s robust skills development programs, including both formal and informal programs, encourage you to thrive as an individual and team member. Beginning with project management skills, training continues with team management/development, client presentation skills, internal seminars, and career mentoring and performance coaching from an assigned senior colleague. Additional leadership and collaboration opportunities exist through internal firm development activities.

• We offer a comprehensive total rewards program including a competitive salary and superior benefits package (plus a sizeable performance bonus), wellness programming to support physical, mental, emotional and financial well-being, and in-house immigration support for foreign nationals and international business travelers.

Work Location Flexibility

CRA creates a work environment that enables our colleagues to benefit from being together in the office to best deliver on our promise of career growth, mentorship and inclusivity. At the same time, we recognize that individuals realize a range of benefits when working from home periodically. We currently expect that individuals spend at least 3 to 4 days a week working in the office (which may include traveling to another CRA office or to client meetings), with specific days determined in coordination with your practice or team.

Our Commitment to Diversity

Charles River Associates is an equal opportunity employer (Equality Act 2010). As part of our focus on equity and inclusion, we work to ensure a fair and consistent hiring process. We celebrate diversity and we are committed to an inclusive work environment.