The Quant career path

Three different jobs under one word, and the ladder is shorter than you expect.

By Surojit Chakraverti — ex-Citi and Rothschild M&A, now a hedge fund CIO

Quant is three jobs sharing a label. A researcher builds signals, a trader manages risk on them, and a developer builds the systems both depend on. The interviews overlap, the day-to-day does not, and choosing between them matters more than choosing a firm.

The ladder is also short. Titles thin out quickly and seniority is expressed in scope and capital rather than in rungs, which is closer to how a hedge fund works than to how a bank does.

The ladder

What changes at each level, rather than what the title is.

01
Junior researcher, trader or developer
Years 1 to 3
Working inside someone else's framework: testing an idea within an existing pipeline, trading a defined book, or owning a component of the stack. The skill being built is rigour, because a subtly wrong backtest is worse than no backtest.
02
Researcher, trader or developer
Years 3 to 6
You propose rather than test. Ideas are yours to defend, and the firm starts allocating on your judgment. Developers move from components to the systems those judgments run on.
03
Senior, or team lead
Years 6 to 10
A book, a strategy or a platform of your own, and usually people. At a prop firm this is where compensation starts tracking a formula on what you generate rather than a band.
04
Partner or head of desk
Year 10 onward
Capital allocation and hiring. The technical work does not stop, but deciding what the group works on becomes the job.

The hours

Shorter and far more predictable than banking. Fifty to sixty is common, set by market hours at a trading firm and by nothing much at a research shop.

Compensation is high relative to the hours, which is the trade people underrate: the difficulty is the selection at entry rather than the grind afterwards.

What it pays, by level

Base and bonus at every rung, aggregated from published surveys rather than from anecdote.

Quant compensation, level by level

Where people go next

Another quant firm
The default. Signals do not travel, but the ability to build them does, and non-competes are common enough to plan around.
A multi-manager platform
More autonomy and a sharper compensation formula, with an explicit drawdown limit attached to it.
Big tech or machine learning
The skills transfer cleanly, the pay usually falls, and the work becomes less adversarial.
Starting something
A small fund or a data business. Rarer than the forums suggest, and dependent on capital that will follow you.

Open quant roles now

Every tracked programme, updated daily.

Common questions

Do you need a PhD to work as a quant?

For research at the top firms it is close to standard, and for trading and development it is not. Trading selects on speed and decision-making under uncertainty, and development on engineering, and both hire strong undergraduates directly.

Quant trading or quant research: which pays more?

Trading pays more at the top and is more variable, because it is closer to the profit and loss. Research is steadier and, at the firms where signals are the product, competitive with it.

Is quant a good career if you dislike markets?

Development, mostly. A quant developer can have a long and well-paid career without ever forming a market view, and research and trading both require one.

Deciding is one thing. Getting in is another.

This page is the map. The prep track is the route: what the interviews test, what firms look for, and the questions you will actually be asked.

Quant interview prep Book a diagnostic

Guides for this path

Quant Interview Questions: Trading, Research and Dev