Associate (Systematic Trading Strategies)

ABOUT US

Quant Lab SFO FZCO is a Dubai-based single family office trading proprietary family capital. We combine quantitative research, AI-powered strategy development and automated execution, built on disciplined risk control, strict position-sizing and long-term performance. Family-funded since 2021, DMCC licensed and independently audited.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are appointing an analyst to own the development of new systematic trading strategies, reporting directly to the Managing Director. The successful candidate will carry each strategy from initial hypothesis through to live deployment, and will be accountable for the work throughout.

You do not need to have worked in trading. We are equally interested in candidates from strategy consulting or another analytically demanding field who have never priced an instrument in their lives. What the role requires is the ability to take an ambiguous question, break it into the parts that decide the answer, and follow the evidence wherever it goes. The market knowledge is learnable here, and we will teach it. The judgement is not, and we cannot.

A significant proportion of our findings contradict established practice, and frequently contradict conclusions we ourselves reached in preceding months. Candidates whose instinct on encountering an unfamiliar result is to explain why it must be mistaken, rather than to investigate it, are unlikely to find the role rewarding.

Principal responsibilities:

- Develop new systematic strategies end to end, from initial hypothesis through data preparation, testing and validation to hand-off into live trading.

- Analyse trade-level data to establish where returns are generated and where they are lost.

- Quantify the expected impact of each finding, so that competing recommendations may be ranked on a common basis.

- Turn agreed strategy logic into working code by directing AI coding assistants, and monitor deployed strategies for anomalies in execution and performance.

- Present findings, their quantified impact and the associated risks, together with a recommended course of action.

The position is based in Dubai. Candidates located elsewhere must be willing to relocate for no less than 50 per cent of working time.

BASIC REQUIREMENTS

Effectiveness

- A material decision having been taken on the strength of your analysis, and knowledge of the outcome.

- The capacity to work effectively as the sole analyst, without a team across which workload or credit is distributed, and evidence of having previously reached an unusually high standard in something demanding, whether professional or otherwise.

- Something substantial you started yourself, that nobody asked for and nobody paid you to do - a venture, a tool, a body of research - or experience of an environment with no structure to lean on, where the function did not exist until you built it. A record made up entirely of work assigned to you inside an established firm, however well executed, does not meet this.

- A disposition to treat an assertion that something cannot be done as a proposition to be tested, and to exercise your own judgement where no guidance is available.

- The ability to become effective in an unfamiliar domain quickly.

- Intellectual honesty: a willingness to report findings that contradict a position you have previously advanced.

- Daily, substantive use of AI coding and research tools such as Claude Code, Codex or Copilot. Our minimum expectation is that such tools are embedded in your core work, that you have established repeatable systems rather than isolated prompts, and that you can articulate their effect on the quality or speed of your output.

Problem Solving

- Exceptional analytical ability: the capacity to structure an ambiguous problem, decompose it and identify which component determines the answer.

- Rigorous empirical judgement, including appropriate scepticism towards results that appear unusually favourable, and the discipline to establish the cause before drawing a conclusion.

Communication

- Excellent written and spoken English, and the ability to convey a technical result to a non-specialist audience without loss of substance.

- The ability to sustain a position under challenge by reference to evidence, and to revise it where the evidence warrants.

PREFERRED

- Three or more years in strategy consulting, or another field where you were paid to answer hard questions with data.

- An interest in financial markets, and the willingness to learn their mechanics properly. Direct experience of equity markets is welcome but is not expected.

- A degree with substantial quantitative content - for example economics, mathematics, statistics, engineering, physics or computer science.

WHAT WE OFFER

- Remuneration of AED 35,000 per month, free of personal income tax, together with an annual bonus linked to the performance of the strategies you develop, and an annual salary review.

- Full ownership of your research agenda from the outset, with no intermediate management layer between you and the decision-maker.

- UAE employment visa, medical insurance, and relocation support covering flights, initial accommodation and visa administration.