SSI Labs | UNSW | Founding Cohort, T3 2026

9 positions available | Unpaid extracurricular | In-person at UNSW

SSI Labs (Student Systematic Investment Labs) is recruiting students for our founding cohort.

We're a student-led quantitative finance research group at UNSW, bringing together students interested in financial markets, statistics and software development to build, backtest and evaluate systematic trading strategies using real market data.

Members work in small project teams, developing research ideas, testing strategies, building technical infrastructure and reviewing each other's work.

The initiative is supervised by a UNSW finance lecturer with 15 years of industry experience as a Head of Trading.

Available Streams1. Markets & Quantitative Research (3 positions)

- Research financial markets and identify systematic trading opportunities.
- Develop hypotheses and turn research ideas into testable strategies.
- Analyse backtesting results, market behaviour and risk.
- Present findings and participate in peer reviews.

2. Statistics & Validation (2 positions)

- Evaluate the statistical reliability of trading strategies.
- Conduct out-of-sample testing and robustness analysis.
- Investigate overfitting, market regimes and risk-adjusted performance.
- Work with researchers to improve models and testing methodology.

3. Software & Data Analytics (4 positions)





- Develop Python-based backtesting and research tools.
- Build and maintain financial market data pipelines.
- Develop analytics, visualisations and research infrastructure.
- Collaborate on debugging, testing and improving software reliability.

Who We're Looking ForApplications are open to current UNSW students from any degree or year.

Backgrounds in finance, actuarial studies, mathematics, statistics, computer science, engineering, information systems and data science are particularly relevant, but not required.

Prior experience in quantitative trading is not necessary. We value analytical thinking, technical curiosity, initiative and the ability to work collaboratively.

Commitment & Eligibility

- 9 positions available across three streams
- Exclusively for current UNSW students
- Weekly in-person research meetings at UNSW
- Approximately 8 to 10 hours per week, including collaborative project work
- Unpaid extracurricular prospect. This is not employment or a paid internship.
- Research and simulated paper trading only. SSI Labs is a non-profit student initiative and does not manage investment capital.

As part of the founding cohort, you'll have the opportunity to contribute to real research projects while helping establish the research practices and infrastructure that future SSI Labs cohorts will build upon.

📌 Quantitative Research & Software Analyst (Unpaid) (Sydney)
🏢 Student Systematic Investments
📍 Sydney