While partners help cover a large amount of costs, there is still the need for the team to spend significant money or procuring parts and workshop equipment, as well as paying for event registration/transport/accommodation.

A student in this role would be responsible for overseeing the various Sunswift accounts to understand the financial state of the project. This includes monitoring project budgets and reviewing procurement requests. 

They will also produce financial forecasts to help determine how funding should be allocated in the future, surrounding major milestones such as events or car development.

Due to recruiting new team members every term, there is a constant stream of students joining and leaving the team each term. HR will involve all steps of the process, including:

• Managing the onboarding of new students into the team, providing base upskilling and introduction to engineering and business practices.
• Updating organisation details such as the org chart, master document, and workshop access for new recruits.
• Establishing recruitment goals for the upcoming term with coordination from the technical team members.
• Offboarding team members who will be leaving at the conclusion of a term to ensure that their learnings are captured.

Events and competitions are a core part of Sunswift and act both as benchmarks to drive involvement, as well as opportunities to showcase the team to the wider public. There are 3 main types of events that the team participates in:

• Showcase events: This involves taking the car and team members to external locations where the car will be displayed to the public. These events have been held in locations such as the Roundhouse, International Convention Centre, and interstate at the National Convention Centre in Canberra.
• Track days: Usually run 1-2 times a term, Sunswift vehicles are taken to Sydney Motorsport Park for testing. This usually involves anywhere between 20 and 50 team members at the location.
• Competitions: While Sunswift may compete in new competitions in the future, currently the bi-annual Bridgestone World Solar Challenge involves taking a technical team of students on the journey from Darwin -> Adelaide over a month-long trip.

Preparing for events includes creating run sheets and personnel rosters, arranging transport and accommodation, and liaising with event organisers (e.g., event staff or partners at showcase events).  

Students in this role will also work with the Partnerships & Sponsorships Managers to integrate partners into events and support activation activities. Likewise, they will help support media engagement at events and conduct reporting after an event to determine its impact.

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As the Sunswift brand continues to grow over the years, new and exciting opportunities continue to present themselves. Marketing students will be tasked with increasing digital brand presence and ensuring that the public image of the team matches the technical and technological output of the project. 

Marketing efforts will also help improve student interest and promote recruitment from within the university. This involves developing campaigns and promotional materials with support from arts and media students.

This role involves supporting the Team Principal in securing new sponsorship agreements, while also helping oversee communications and managing existing relationships. 

This includes developing and executing authentic partner activations alongside the Media team and Events team where necessary. It also involves tracking the impact of partnerships for reporting purposes and coordinating partner hosting experiences at events such as track days or offsites.

At Sunswift, work is assigned in a project-based, event-driven approach. That means that work on the vehicle is divided into individual projects such as Doors (SR8-001) or Hydrogen Fuel Cell (SR8-123), while deadlines are set around upcoming events such as a track day or car build. 

This is all tracked through the Project Tracking System (PTS) sheet which is updated weekly by the Executive Leadership Team and includes the scope of a project, its upcoming deadlines, project leads, expected cost, etc.

A project manager in the team would be responsible for working with engineering project leads to update the PTS and track the progress of a project. They would be responsible for setting and chasing up deadlines, as well as setting out the scope of project deliverables in a way that meets the technical requirements of the system.