Quant Developer Intern

About Marshall Wace

Marshall Wace is a leading global alternatives investment manager with around $85bn in assets under management and over 700 employees working across London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, and Abu Dhabi.  Operating as a single team across the globe, we are dedicated to creating long-term relationships with our clients built on trust and integrity. We define our culture as one of continuous innovation and a quest for improvement. We instinctively strive to do things differently, with fresh thinking that enables us to create proprietary value and maximise the benefits to our clients.

We manage quantitative, systematic, and fundamental strategies, specializing predominantly in long/short equity. Our strategies are implemented globally, leveraging proprietary systems and processes. Technology and data have been at the core of our business for more than two decades. In 2002, we launched MW TOPS, the world’s first ‘Alpha Capture’ application. Today, we continue to foster an environment focused on innovation and the pursuit of excellence.

The Opportunity

The Quant Implementation team builds the systems that connect quantitative research to live trading within Marshall Wace’s systematic investment business. Quantitative developers design, implement and maintain alpha algorithms and portfolio construction processes, translating research ideas into robust production systems. The role combines quantitative problem-solving with software engineering and the challenge of operating reliable, high-performance systems at scale.

As a Quant Implementation Intern, you will gain first-hand exposure to the full lifecycle of a systematic investment idea—from research and data analysis through portfolio construction, implementation and performance monitoring. This is not a pure software engineering internship: you will use technology as a tool to solve investment problems and will develop an understanding of how systematic strategies make decisions, manage risk and generate trades.

You will join a collaborative global team and contribute to meaningful projects with direct relevance to the investment process. The internship is well suited to someone who enjoys combining quantitative thinking, markets and hands-on problem solving.

What You Will Do

• Analyse market and portfolio data to understand signal behaviour, trading outcomes and strategy performance.
• Help validate new models and portfolio construction changes before they are introduced into live trading.
• Investigate differences between research expectations and real-world results, considering data, market, risk and implementation effects.
• Contribute clean, reliable code to systems that support live systematic strategies.

Examples of Internship Projects

• Analysing how transaction costs, liquidity or portfolio constraints affect a strategy’s realised performance.
• Building analytics to explain portfolio positioning, risk exposures or recent trading activity.
• Improving a portfolio construction process to support a new market, instrument or investment objective.
• Developing monitoring that helps the team identify unusual model or trading behaviour.

What We Are Looking For

• Currently studying toward a master’s or PhD in a quantitative subject such as computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics, engineering or a related discipline.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with an interest in applying them to financial markets.
• Programming experience in Python, MATLAB, C++, Java or a similar language.
• A solid foundation in probability, statistics, linear algebra or numerical methods.
• Curiosity about systematic investing and a desire to understand why a strategy works—not only how to code it.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to work collaboratively across research and technology teams.
• Care, ownership and sound judgement when working with data and code.

Prior finance experience is helpful but not required. We are more interested in evidence of intellectual curiosity, rigorous thinking and enthusiasm for learning how quantitative ideas are translated into live investment decisions.

What You Will Gain

• Direct exposure to systematic investing and the practical decisions behind live portfolios and trades.
• Experience working alongside quantitative researchers, traders and experienced developers.
• An understanding of the gap between a promising research result and a robust, scalable investment process.
• Mentoring, technical guidance and opportunities to learn about different strategies, markets and asset classes.
• The opportunity to see your work contribute to real investment workflows during the internship.

Why Join Us?

This internship offers a rare combination of quantitative research, software engineering and commercial investment exposure. You will work on problems where technical quality matters because the output influences real portfolios, while developing a practical understanding of markets and systematic trading.

We value people who ask thoughtful questions, challenge assumptions and work collaboratively to deliver results. If you are excited by the idea of using quantitative methods and technology to help turn investment research into live trading, we would like to hear from you.