Requirements
The role requires developing new systematic trading strategies end-to-end, including data preparation, backtesting, validation, and live deployment. Candidates must possess exceptional analytical ability, rigorous empirical judgment, excellent written and spoken English, and daily substantive use of AI coding and research tools. Preferred qualifications include 3+ years in quantitative research or systematic trading, familiarity with backtesting biases and equity market mechanics, and the ability to modify object-oriented code.
Description
Job description / Role
Job Type
Full Time
Job Location
Dubai, UAE
Nationality
Any Nationality
Salary
Not Specified
Gender
Not Specified
Arabic Fluency
Not Specified
Job Function
Finance, Business Analysis & Consulting
Company Industry
Finance, Investment & Asset Management
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. 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, backtesting and validation to hand-off into live trading.
Design and conduct backtests, and quantify the sources of divergence between simulated and live performance, including execution, liquidity and transaction-cost effects.
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.
Subject conclusions to out-of-sample testing, controls for overfitting and consideration of alternative explanations before presenting them.
Implement strategy logic in the trading platform, 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.
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 quantitative research, systematic trading or data-intensive analytics, or a demonstrable record of independently developing and testing systematic strategies.
Familiarity with the specific mechanisms by which a backtest misleads, including look-ahead bias, survivorship bias, in-sample parameter selection, and unmodelled transaction and borrowing costs.
Working knowledge of equity market mechanics — order types, liquidity, trading halts and transaction costs — and experience of US equity markets in particular.
The ability to read and modify object-oriented code, for example C#.
A degree in mathematics, statistics, physics, computer science, engineering or quantitative finance.
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.
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