Quant Pay Trajectory (2024)

1y

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From what I have seen (and I have limited info, especially on the sell side):

I’ll start with my typical caveat that “quant” can mean 1000 different things, and the title is thrown around for many different roles. As expected, the closer you are to managing money/taking risk/etc the higher (and more variable) your comp will be.

Generally sell side quant is lower pay (sometimes much lower). These roles tend to be more risk based or “support” roles and not risk taking roles (or even part of the “core” of what the business does). I’ve seen quants with experience on the sell side that are still in the $250-350k range after 5-10 years.

On the buy side there is a very wide range (again depending on what the firm means by this role, risk taking vs not, more of portfolio construction or alpha, etc). “Good/Average” quant like roles (in a “good” area of the firm) will hit a ceiling around $600-750k (some will get to $1mm or so). For more upside you usually have to have one of the following: 1) be exceptional in the role, 2) be in an alpha generating role/have PnL 3) be more of a “manager” type of running a team. If you have one of those the upside can be large, but at that point you are focusing on outliers.

The above is also for good places, there are many (at least that I’ve heard about) that silo the quants and take advantage of them (usually just need them to execute work and cap them out early).

1y

Please stop misusing the word traders, I copy/paste the definition of trader from a Citadel job offer for a trading position :

"Trading professionals on the Global Quantitative Strategies team support overall trade operations related to systematic trading strategies, which include ensuring effective trade execution (both automated and manual) within parameters established by Quantitative Research (QR). Traders work in a team environment that closely integrates trading, quantitative research and technology."

Trader => execution trader in 90% of HFs, and no they don't make 7 figures as no risk taking.

Back to the subject : talking only for buy side

Quant researchers often take risks/design strategies and if it is the case they are paid in the same range as a risk taking analyst at a fundamental shop/pod.

If they do more theoretical or global research like portfolio construction or more academic paper style, pay is less but stability and wlb are better. It is more like a tech job than an investment position.

1y

If you are referring to the Quant Traders and Researchers at prop trading firms such as Optiver, IMC, JS, CitSec, etc., you are correct for assuming that they do more than just execution. Many of those firms have Quantitative Traders and Execution Traders as separate positions with different responsibilities and different levels of pay.

The Quant Traders that you are likely thinking of work on some desk for a specific asset or asset class (e.g. index options, single-stock options, treasuries / FX options, etc.) and they do significantly more than just execution. Most work for these guys during the morning is focused on trading and managing their desk's positions / risk, and many of them are focused on project work in the afternoon when things start to slow down. Often newer desks have more "project" work than more established desks -- i.e. if your prop shop has traded EURUSD options for a while with many traders on that desk, then it will likely have less project work than a new desk that has just started trading something with less volume like maybe USDBRL for example. (Obviously this is just an arbitrary example for FX assets). One thing to note is that these QT's are usually very much aligned with the QR and Dev guys at these prop shops -- a lot of the time the signal generation and ML models may be the main role for the QRs here and the QTs have to be able to very much understand and apply these models when markets are moving in all directions. From my experience, the top QTs and QRs make the most money at these places, with devs topping out a little lower (but still making great money).

The other side of things away from the prop shops is PM/Research side of HFs (Two Sigma QR, Citadel, etc). The researchers in these roles often have the strongest pay because they are the ones generating new strategies and new alphas. The closer you are to generating alpha and managing risk / other people, the more money you make.

Sell-side quants at BBs are extremely variable and usually have a ceiling on what they make that is lower than a risk-taking QR at a HF or a QT at a market-making prop shop -- not sure how their hours compare though.