London vs New York for quant jobs

Two markets, not one market in two places

The hubs are not interchangeable. They differ in employer mix, in the seats that are hardest to fill, and in how people move between firms.

Volume

New York consistently shows the larger count of open quant vacancies in our dataset, with London second. Our city pages publish the live counts with the number of employers behind them, so you can check the current position rather than relying on a snapshot in an article.

Employer mix

London has a notably strong market-making and systematic-trading presence alongside the platform funds. New York carries more multi-strategy platform hiring and more portfolio-management seats. That shapes which roles you will actually see advertised.

Pay

Advertised ranges skew higher in New York. Set against that: taxation, healthcare and cost of living differ enough that a headline comparison is close to meaningless without modelling your own situation. Our salary calculator lets you do that rather than trusting a ratio.

Mobility

London sits inside a wider European network — Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris, Zug — and moving between them is common. New York is a bigger single pool with less routine cross-border movement.

The practical answer

If you want maximum volume of research and platform seats, New York. If you want employer variety, European optionality and a strong short-horizon trading market, London. Both markets reward the same preparation.