How to Apply to CDPQ

12 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 23 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • CDPQ (La Caisse) is a CAD 413B Quebec pension manager with a dual mandate: optimal long-term returns AND Quebec economic development. Understand both halves before applying.
  • The ATS is Workday at cdpq.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/CDPQ. Build your profile carefully and verify every parsed field.
  • For Montreal roles, functional French is effectively required at professional levels. Fluency is a ceiling for senior and public-facing work. State your level honestly.
  • Expect three to five rounds: recruiter preselection, hiring manager, panel(s), and often an executive round, plus a technical test for investment and technology roles.
  • Interview style is rigorous but calm. Underpreparing because it feels civil is a classic failure mode.
  • Compensation is below global bulge-bracket and top-tier PE norms but competitive within the Canadian pension peer group, with strong benefits, pension, and work-life structure. Model your offer against that peer group, not against New York investment banks.
  • CDPQ Infra and Ivanhoe Cambridge hire on separate streams. Match the entity to the role and apply through the correct portal.
  • Recent controversies (REM cost overruns, 2024 PE losses, Azure Power) are fair game in interviews. Engage with them substantively rather than avoiding them.

About CDPQ

Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ), which now markets itself internationally as La Caisse, is Quebec's public pension fund manager and one of the largest institutional investors in the world. Founded in 1965 by the Lesage government to manage contributions from the newly created Quebec Pension Plan, the organization has grown from a single-purpose provincial fund into a global investment group with net assets of approximately CAD 413 billion as of year-end 2025 and more than 1,680 employees. Its mandate is unusual and worth understanding before you apply: CDPQ manages money for roughly 48 Quebec public pension and insurance plans, and is legally required to pursue both optimal long-term returns AND contribute to Quebec's economic development. That dual mandate shapes everything from deal sourcing to compensation philosophy. The fund is headquartered in the Edifice Jacques-Parizeau in downtown Montreal, steps from Place des Arts and the Quartier des spectacles. The Montreal tower is the professional and cultural gravitational center of the organization; even roles that support global portfolios generally flow back through this building. CDPQ also operates offices in Quebec City, Toronto, New York, London, Paris, Singapore, New Delhi, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Sydney, giving it on-the-ground presence across its core geographies in equities, fixed income, credit, private equity, infrastructure, and real estate. Under CEO Charles Emond, appointed in 2020, the organization has leaned further into private markets, climate transition investing, and large-scale infrastructure ownership. Its subsidiary CDPQ Infra is the developer and majority owner of the Reseau express metropolitain (REM), the 67-kilometre automated light-rail network reshaping transit in greater Montreal, and has exported that model to projects abroad. Its real estate subsidiary Ivanhoe Cambridge owns and operates shopping centres, office towers, logistics assets, and multifamily platforms across North America, Europe, and Asia. These subsidiaries are where a large portion of CDPQ's operating headcount lives, and they hire on their own streams as well as through the parent. Culturally, La Caisse sits at a peculiar intersection. It has the governance formality and fiduciary rigour of a major pension fund; the deal pace and travel intensity of a global alternatives manager; the political visibility of a state-linked enterprise whose board appearances are reported in La Presse and The Globe and Mail; and the distinct linguistic character of a Quebec-headquartered institution that operates in French as its primary working language in Montreal, even for investment teams that transact globally in English. Candidates who understand that blend tend to do well. Candidates who treat it as just another Canadian fund, or just another global PE shop, usually do not.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Identify the right entity

    Identify the right entity. CDPQ, CDPQ Infra, and Ivanhoe Cambridge each post on their own job boards. CDPQ corporate and investment roles are hosted on Workday at cdpq.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/CDPQ. CDPQ Infra construction, engineering, and transit operations roles post separately. Ivanhoe Cambridge has its own careers site. Applying to the wrong entity will not be forwarded, so check the URL in the job posting before you apply.

  2. 2
    Submit through Workday

    Submit through Workday. The La Caisse careers site links out to the Workday tenant. You will create a Workday candidate profile, upload a resume or CV, and can optionally parse data into structured fields. The parser mangles bilingual accents and bullet glyphs, so always proofread every field before submitting. A cover letter is not mandatory but is explicitly welcomed per the careers FAQ, and is strongly recommended for investment, legal, and senior corporate roles.

  3. 3
    Apply in the language of the posting

    Apply in the language of the posting. Postings written in French expect a French application. Postings written in English accept English, but bilingual candidates should submit a French cover letter alongside an English CV for any Montreal-based role. Unilingual English applicants for Montreal positions should acknowledge the language requirement directly in the cover letter and confirm willingness to learn or demonstrate current level.

  4. 4
    Expect a preselection call from Talent Acquisition

    Expect a preselection call from Talent Acquisition. Per CDPQ's own process description, the first live step is a preselection interview with a recruiter. This is a 20 to 30 minute conversation about your background, motivation, language abilities, compensation expectations, and work authorization. French level will be discussed here if the role is Montreal-based.

  5. 5
    Prepare for selection interviews plus a technical test

    Prepare for selection interviews plus a technical test. CDPQ's posted process lists selection interview(s) (plural) AND a technical test. For investment roles this almost always means a modelling case or market/thesis exercise. For technology roles it means a coding or systems design exercise. For corporate roles it can be a written case, a presentation, or a structured behavioural interview using competency-based questions.

  6. 6
    Accept the offer in writing and plan for background verification

    Accept the offer in writing and plan for background verification. Offers are written, contingent on reference checks, criminal record check, and for investment-facing roles a credit check and conflicts/personal trading disclosure. Public-sector compensation reporting rules apply to senior executives, so do not be surprised if your eventual comp appears in the annual report if you reach leadership level.

  7. 7
    Internships and the graduate program

    Internships and the graduate program. CDPQ runs a structured internship program across investment, investment support, finance, IT, operations, communications, and legal. Applications generally open in the fall for summer terms and open again mid-term for winter and fall cohorts. Students at HEC Montreal, McGill Desautels, Polytechnique Montreal, Concordia JMSB, Universite de Montreal, Universite Laval, and Sherbrooke are heavily represented. Applying early matters: popular investment internships close within days of posting.

Resume Tips for CDPQ

recommended

Lead with measurable investment or operational outcomes, not titles

Lead with measurable investment or operational outcomes, not titles. CDPQ reviewers care more about 'closed a USD 180M co-investment in European data centres' than about the name of your prior employer. For non-investment roles the same principle applies: dollar-weighted impact, deal count, audit findings cleared, system uptime, or percent cost reduction beats generic responsibility language.

recommended

Bilingual signal belongs at the top

Bilingual signal belongs at the top. For Montreal-based roles, state your French level using the standard Quebec self-assessment (courant, intermediaire avance, intermediaire, de base). If you are an Office quebecois de la langue francaise certified candidate or a graduate of a French-language university, say so. English-only candidates for Montreal roles should state honestly that French is a working goal and describe any current effort, rather than hide it.

recommended

Make HR-XML and ATS-clean structure non-negotiable

Make HR-XML and ATS-clean structure non-negotiable. Workday's parser is unforgiving. Use a single-column layout, standard section headings (Experience, Education, Certifications, Languages), no tables, no text boxes, no headshots, no coloured bars. Save as PDF. CDPQ's internal search uses Workday's parsed fields as much as the uploaded file.

recommended

Quantify transaction experience in a format a senior PM can skim

Quantify transaction experience in a format a senior PM can skim. For PE, infra, credit, or public markets candidates, a separate Selected Transactions section with deal name or sector, role (lead, co-lead, support), enterprise value or commitment size, instrument, and outcome is standard. Anonymise where NDAs require and note that anonymisation was intentional.

recommended

Show familiarity with CDPQ's actual portfolio

Show familiarity with CDPQ's actual portfolio. If you are applying to Infrastructure, referencing public knowledge of REM, Invenergy, Azure Power, DP World logistics platforms, or European transmission assets in your cover letter signals preparation. Do not bluff inside knowledge you do not have, but public disclosure is fair game and expected.

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Technology, data, and AI roles should lead with cloud and platform specifics

Technology, data, and AI roles should lead with cloud and platform specifics. CDPQ has been modernising on AWS and building enterprise data platforms, with roles currently posted for AWS platform development, FinOps, Palo Alto network administration, and process automation. Listing concrete stack experience, certifications, and platform-scale metrics outperforms generic 'full-stack engineer' framing.

recommended

Legal and compliance candidates should foreground regulated-industry fluency

Legal and compliance candidates should foreground regulated-industry fluency. Transactional private equity lawyers, fund structuring specialists, and credit documentation counsel are the patterns you see in postings. Mention jurisdictions, fund structures, and regulators you have dealt with (AMF, OSFI, SEC, FCA, AMF France, MAS), not just deal types.

recommended

Include an 'Impact in Quebec' line where it is honest

Include an 'Impact in Quebec' line where it is honest. The mandate explicitly includes Quebec economic development. If you have experience with Quebec SMEs, Quebec infrastructure, Fonds de solidarite projects, Investissement Quebec partnerships, Montreal innovation ecosystem, or cultural and nonprofit governance, it is a legitimate differentiator. Do not fabricate it. The interviewers can tell.

recommended

Keep length to two pages for mid-career, three for senior investment professiona

Keep length to two pages for mid-career, three for senior investment professionals, and one for interns and new graduates. Long CVs common in European finance are tolerated for senior roles but should still be tight.

ATS System: Workday

CDPQ runs its applicant tracking on Workday, hosted at cdpq.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/CDPQ. Workday is the dominant ATS among large Canadian pension funds and global institutional investors, and CDPQ uses a standard configuration: public job board, candidate profile creation, resume parsing into structured fields, internal mobility portal, and integration with HR, talent management, and onboarding downstream. Postings list a requisition ID in the format R#### that you should keep for reference. Filters are available for location, time type, and job category. The site is bilingual at the container level but individual requisitions are posted in whichever language the hiring team operates in, so the majority of Montreal-based postings appear in French with a minority in English. All global roles (London, Singapore, New York, New Delhi, Paris, Sao Paulo) tend to post in English.

  • Create your Workday profile early and save it. If you apply to multiple CDPQ roles over time, the same profile persists, saving re-entry. Update it before each new application so that your most recent role and achievements flow through correctly.
  • Use an ATS-friendly resume: standard fonts (Arial, Calibri, Helvetica), 10 to 12 point, left-aligned, no graphics, no columns, no headers/footers, and a clean section hierarchy. Save and upload as PDF generated from Word, Google Docs, or a clean Markdown-to-PDF pipeline. Resumes generated with visual templates often break Workday's parser.
  • Verify every parsed field before clicking Submit. Workday will pre-fill employer, title, dates, and skills. It routinely mis-reads bilingual names, accented text, and formatted bullets. Fix these in the form; do not assume the uploaded PDF will override.
  • Fill in language fields properly. Workday has separate fields for English and French proficiency and will expose them to recruiters in search filters. A Montreal recruiter filtering for 'French: Advanced' will not see you if the field is blank, even if your CV says bilingual.
  • Set up email alerts on the Workday board for your keywords and locations. CDPQ postings move quickly, particularly for popular investment seats and internships. Alerts can be created directly from a search result page.
  • Use the internal mobility view if you are already a CDPQ employee. Internal candidates apply through a different Workday URL and receive priority review per the standard Workday internal mobility flow.
  • Do not apply from aggregators. LinkedIn Easy Apply and third-party job boards sometimes redirect, but it is safer to apply through the CDPQ Workday tenant directly so your application lands in the correct pipeline.

Interview Culture

CDPQ's interview culture can be summarised as rigorous, structured, respectful, and distinctly bilingual.

The process is slower than US bulge-bracket banking and faster than European public pensions. For investment, corporate, and senior professional roles you should expect three to five rounds spread across two to six weeks. The first is the recruiter preselection call described in the application process. The second is typically a hiring manager conversation focused on fit, motivation, and role-specific depth. Rounds three and four are panel interviews with future peers and senior stakeholders. Senior seats often add a final meeting with an executive vice-president or department head, and in rare cases the Chief Investment Officer or an equivalent function head. Investment and credit interviews include a technical component. For private equity and private debt this is usually a modelling case delivered at home over a weekend or as a shorter on-site exercise, followed by a discussion of your output with two or three professionals. You should be ready to defend assumptions on capital structure, covenants, base case versus downside, valuation methodology, and portfolio fit with CDPQ's actual mandate. For infrastructure, expect discussion of regulated versus contracted cash flow profiles, concession risk, and climate adjusted scenarios; CDPQ Infra specifically will probe transit, energy transition, and regulated utility frameworks. For public markets, expect a pitch, usually long or short, with clear thesis, catalysts, risks, and position sizing. Behavioural interviewing at CDPQ is competency based. Questions tend to probe collaboration across geographies, navigation of ambiguous mandates, escalation of risk, ethical judgement, and handling dissent. Answers in STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) are expected and interviewers will drill down on the Result and on counterfactuals: what you would do differently, how you measured success, and who else was affected. CDPQ's dual mandate means you should be prepared to discuss decisions where return maximisation and broader stakeholder considerations were in tension. Language expectations are real and should be planned for. For Montreal-based roles, senior interviewers will usually switch briefly into French to confirm comfort, even when the rest of the interview is in English. Responses in functional French are generally sufficient; perfect fluency is not required for external hires outside of client-facing or government-facing mandates. For roles where French is genuinely required (communications, legal affairs, certain HR functions, and any Quebec government-facing interaction), the interview will be partly or fully in French and level will be assessed directly. For non-Montreal offices the expectation is English working fluency only, with French treated as a plus. Tone across interviews is professional and courteous rather than combative. CDPQ does not run Wall-Street-style stress interviews. That can mislead candidates into underpreparing. The rigour is there; it is just delivered calmly. Expect detailed follow-up questions, quiet probing of weaknesses, and a high bar for intellectual honesty. Candidates who bluff their way through assumptions they do not understand fail the technical round almost without exception. Decision timelines are slower than a bank and faster than a government agency. Four to eight weeks from first contact to written offer is typical for professional roles, longer for senior seats involving board or executive approval. Communication between rounds is generally good, but radio silence of seven to ten business days after a panel is common and should not be interpreted as rejection.

What CDPQ Looks For

  • Fiduciary judgement. CDPQ manages public pension money with a legislated mandate. Hiring panels explicitly value candidates who can articulate why a decision is right for depositors over twenty years, not just right for a deal at quarter-end.
  • Bilingual capacity and cultural fluency in Quebec. Functional French for Montreal roles is close to a hard requirement at professional levels, and fluency is a ceiling condition for most senior and client-facing roles.
  • Deep technical grounding in the asset class or function. For investment roles this means modelling fluency, sector knowledge, and real deal pattern-matching. For technology roles this means production-grade experience with the exact platforms CDPQ uses. Surface-level familiarity is caught quickly.
  • Comfort with scale and public visibility. Decisions at CDPQ can become news. Leaders want people who can operate inside that reality without being paralysed by it or performing for it.
  • Constructive collaboration across silos and geographies. The fund moves capital across asset classes and offices. Candidates who have operated in matrixed, multi-jurisdiction structures outperform lone-wolf specialists.
  • Alignment with the mandate. Candidates who see both return generation and Quebec economic development as serious, not competing, parts of the job are a better fit than candidates who treat the mandate as boilerplate.
  • Integrity and disclosure hygiene. The fund has strict rules on personal trading, outside activities, and conflicts. Candidates who volunteer conflicts up front and describe how they have managed them in prior roles do far better than those who minimise them.
  • Climate and transition literacy. CDPQ has publicly committed to a climate strategy that includes decarbonisation targets and transition investing. Candidates across investment, risk, and corporate functions should be able to engage substantively with this topic rather than recite talking points.
  • Resilience under public scrutiny. Recent years have brought hard stories: REM Phase 2 scope and cost pressure, private equity markdowns in the 2024 cycle, and the Azure Power India fallout with its securities-law fallout and governance review. Strong candidates acknowledge that record honestly and talk about how they would have contributed to better outcomes, not defensively avoid it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does CDPQ use, and where do I actually apply?
CDPQ uses Workday. The public job board lives at cdpq.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/CDPQ and is linked from the La Caisse careers page (lacaisse.com/en/careers). Apply directly through that Workday URL rather than through aggregators to make sure your application reaches the right pipeline. CDPQ Infra and Ivanhoe Cambridge post separately on their own systems.
Do I need to speak French to work at CDPQ?
It depends on the location and role. For Montreal-based professional roles, functional French is effectively required and fluency is a strong advantage; it becomes a hard requirement for senior, government-facing, legal, communications, and HR positions. For CDPQ's international offices (New York, London, Paris, Singapore, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Sydney) English working fluency is the main requirement, with French as a plus. Entry-level investment and technology hires in Montreal are occasionally accepted as English-working with a credible plan to build French, but this is reviewed case by case.
Is CDPQ compensation competitive?
It is competitive within the Canadian pension peer group (CPP Investments, PSP, Ontario Teachers, OMERS, IMCO, British Columbia Investment Management, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan) and generally stronger than Canadian asset managers of comparable size. It is not comparable to New York bulge-bracket banking, US mega-fund private equity, or top-tier hedge funds. Senior investment compensation includes base, annual bonus, and a long-term incentive plan tied to multi-year performance. Benefits, pension, and health coverage are strong; work-life balance at the non-deal level is significantly better than Wall Street but deal teams still run hard during active transactions. Senior executive comp is publicly disclosed in the annual report.
How long is the recruitment process?
For most professional roles the full process from application to written offer takes four to eight weeks. Senior seats that require executive or board approval can take ten to fourteen weeks. Internships move faster, generally two to four weeks. Expect periodic silence of seven to ten business days between rounds, which is routine and not a negative signal.
What is the difference between CDPQ, CDPQ Infra, Ivanhoe Cambridge, and La Caisse?
La Caisse is the international brand that the organisation now uses for its overall identity; the legal name remains Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ). CDPQ Infra is the wholly-owned subsidiary that develops and operates large-scale transportation infrastructure, most visibly the REM automated light-rail network in greater Montreal. Ivanhoe Cambridge is the real estate subsidiary, investing in and operating retail, office, industrial, residential, and mixed-use assets globally. They share ultimate ownership but have distinct teams, cultures, hiring processes, and career boards. When applying, match the entity to the role in the posting.
Does CDPQ sponsor work permits for international candidates?
CDPQ and its subsidiaries hire internationally and will sponsor work authorisation where the role justifies it, particularly for senior investment talent and specialised technology and legal roles. For Montreal-based roles, sponsorship is more selective because of Quebec immigration rules and the language expectation. Canadian permanent residents and citizens, and candidates already holding open work permits, have a materially smoother process. Check the specific posting; visa language is explicit where it applies.
What should I know about recent news before my interview?
Three threads come up in interviews. First, the REM light-rail project: CDPQ Infra's flagship has delivered operating segments but also faced scope and cost pressure on later phases and some public criticism. Second, 2024 private-market performance: CDPQ reported meaningful private equity markdowns during that cycle, and candidates should be ready to discuss PE valuation methodology under stress. Third, the Azure Power India situation: governance, disclosure, and securities-law issues at a portfolio company produced a public review of CDPQ's oversight practices. Strong candidates engage with all three substantively and honestly rather than deflecting.
Do I need a cover letter?
Not technically mandatory, but highly recommended. For investment, legal, and senior corporate roles a focused one-page cover letter in the language of the posting (French for French postings, English for English postings) materially strengthens your application. For internship applications a cover letter is close to a practical requirement because it is how Talent Acquisition filters motivation and language ability.
How selective is the CDPQ internship program?
It is selective, particularly for investment, risk, and finance seats. Successful candidates typically come from HEC Montreal, McGill Desautels, Polytechnique Montreal, JMSB Concordia, Universite de Montreal, Universite Laval, and Sherbrooke in Quebec; Ivey, Rotman, Queen's, and Waterloo outside Quebec; and occasionally international universities for specialised asset-class internships. Strong grades, a relevant project or prior internship, and a coherent narrative about why CDPQ specifically (not 'finance' generically) matter more than raw pedigree. Apply early in the cycle; many investment internships close within a week of posting.
What is the dress code and on-site expectation?
Dress in downtown Montreal is business professional for investment and executive interactions, business casual for most day-to-day corporate and technology work. For interviews, default to business professional regardless of role. On-site expectations follow a hybrid model with meaningful in-office presence in Montreal, usually three or more days per week for most teams, and more for deal teams during active transactions. Fully remote is rare; remote-first is not the posture of this organisation.

Open Positions

CDPQ currently has 23 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 23 open positions at CDPQ

Related Resources

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Sources

  1. La Caisse (CDPQ) Careers - Official site —
  2. CDPQ Workday job board (public) —
  3. CDPQ Corporate About page —
  4. CDPQ Infra - REM project —
  5. Ivanhoe Cambridge - Real estate subsidiary —
  6. CDPQ internship program —