Quant pay: how to read an offer and compare two of them

Why there is no single quant salary

People arrive at this page wanting one number. The reason nobody can honestly give you one is not secrecy: it is that a quant package is not a salary. It is a bundle of separately governed components, and firms load them differently. Two offers that both read "275,000 in year one" can differ by tens of thousands in what reaches your account in the first twelve months, and by more than that in what recurs afterwards.

So this guide does something more useful than an average. It names the components, shows how they interact, and walks a hypothetical comparison end to end so you can repeat the arithmetic on your own two offers.

This is career decision support. It is not investment, legal or tax advice, and nothing here tells you what you will take home after tax.

The six components of an offer

1. Base salary. Contractual, recurring, paid through the year. This is the only line most people can plan around. It is also the line that sets the floor for every future year, which is why trading base against a one-off payment is rarely neutral.

2. A guaranteed first-year amount. Sometimes called a guarantee, a first-year minimum or a guaranteed bonus. The single most important question here is whether the figure is inclusive of base or in addition to it. A "guaranteed 275,000" on a 215,000 base means a 60,000 bonus if inclusive, and a 275,000 bonus if additional. Ask in writing.

3. Sign-on and other one-off payments. Buy-outs of deferred compensation you are forfeiting, relocation, a signing bonus. These are usually conditional: clawback if you leave within a stated period, sometimes paid in tranches. They raise year one and nothing after it.

4. Discretionary bonus. The component the market is actually famous for, and the one with no promised value. Jane Street's public New York engineering advert is a clean example of how firms describe the split: it states a base salary of $300,000, then describes that base as "only one part" of a total compensation package that includes an annual discretionary bonus. That is one advert at one firm for one function, read on 13 September 2026. It tells you how that firm structures pay. It is not a market estimate, and we are not presenting it as one.

5. Deferred amounts. A share of bonus above a threshold paid over subsequent years, often with conditions attached to still being employed. Deferral is not a reduction, but it is not cash now either, and it changes what leaving costs you.

6. Non-cash. Employer retirement contributions, healthcare, visa support, equity or fund-participation arrangements where offered. Quantify what can be quantified; note the rest as a tie-breaker rather than folding a guess into the total. Several of these are conditional - an employer retirement match is usually stated as an amount up to a percentage of base, payable only if you contribute enough and meet the eligibility rules - so record the condition next to the figure instead of treating it as income.

Discretionary is a legal term as well as a cultural one

In Great Britain, Acas guidance on bonuses distinguishes contractual bonuses - guaranteed when agreed criteria are met, and recorded in the written statement of employment particulars - from discretionary bonuses, where the requirements are not set in advance and the award is not guaranteed. Acas also notes there is no legal requirement for an employer to provide a bonus at all, that an employer exercising discretion is still expected to act fairly, and that a regularly paid bonus can become an entitlement through custom and practice.

That is guidance for Great Britain. It is not a statement of United States law, and it is not a universal right. If your offer is in New York, Chicago, Amsterdam or Hong Kong, the framework is different and the answer comes from your contract and local advice, not from this page.

Headline first year versus recurring cash

Three different numbers get called "the offer", and conflating them is the most common comparison error:

• Headline first year. All cash compensation attributable to year one, including one-offs and amounts paid after the year ends. It excludes benefits and any expense the employer pays directly on your behalf, because neither is cash compensation to you.
• Cash received in the first twelve months. What actually lands in your account while you are living on it. A bonus attributable to year one is often paid after the year ends, which puts it outside this figure - but the payment date is a term of your offer, so read it rather than assuming it.
• Recurring contractual cash. What you can count on in year two and beyond, before any discretionary award. Usually just base.

A package can win on the first and lose on the third. Write all three down for each offer.

A worked comparison

Both offers below are hypothetical and invented for this example. The numbers are chosen to make the arithmetic legible, not to represent market levels, and no part of this is drawn from our dataset. Same city, same currency, same period: USD, annual.

The scenario, stated so the timing is unambiguous. Both roles start on 1 January. The first twelve months therefore run to 31 December, and any bonus attributable to year one is paid in the following February - outside that window. Sign-on is paid on the first payroll, inside it.

Offer A. Base 175,000. Sign-on 40,000 paid on the first payroll, repayable pro rata if you leave within twelve months. Guaranteed first-year bonus 60,000, stated as in addition to base, paid in February of the following year. Discretionary thereafter with no stated range. Employer retirement contribution matching up to 6% of base. Relocation: the employer pays up to 15,000 of documented moving expenses directly to the suppliers, so it is a benefit in kind rather than cash paid to you.

Offer B. Base 215,000. No sign-on. Guaranteed first-year total compensation of 275,000, stated as inclusive of base - so the guaranteed bonus is 275,000 minus 215,000 = 60,000, paid after year end. From year two, 25% of any bonus above 100,000 is deferred over three years. Employer retirement contribution 4% of base. No relocation.

Read the three bold rows together, and note that all three are cash-only. The headlines are identical. The first-year cash is identical, by coincidence of construction: A's 40,000 sign-on happens to close the 40,000 base gap. The offers are not equivalent at all, because from year two Offer A's contractual floor is 40,000 lower and its sign-on does not repeat. Offer A only overtakes if its discretionary bonus consistently exceeds B's by more than that gap - which is exactly the part nobody can guarantee you.

The two benefit lines sit below the totals and stay out of them. A's relocation is 15,000 of expenses the employer settles directly, so it never becomes income to you; if your own offer instead pays relocation as cash into your account, move it into the sign-on line and into both cash totals - but only once. A's retirement match is an *up to* figure: 10,500 is the hypothetical maximum if you contribute enough and satisfy the plan's eligibility rules, and the realised amount can be zero. Any "total compensation including benefits" figure you build has to be quoted on the same basis for both offers, with the conditional lines flagged as conditional.

Three rules the arithmetic enforces. Do not count the sign-on twice by adding it to both the headline and the recurring figure. Do not add benefits into cash: they are a different kind of money, so they sit on their own lines. And do not silently annualise a one-off, or divide a guarantee across years it does not cover.

If the comparison is close on guaranteed money, the decision is not really about pay. It is about the uncertain component, and that is a judgement about the seat, the team and the firm - not a number you can look up.

The checklist to take into the conversation

Copy these questions. Ask them of both offers, and get the answers in the written offer rather than a call.

Where our own numbers fit

Our salary index and salary calculator publish modelled bands: for a supported role, seniority and market you get a lower bound, an upper bound and their midpoint, for total compensation and for the base component inside it. That midpoint is the average of the two bounds. It is not a median, a quartile, a percentile or a sample of observed offers, and no distribution or confidence is claimed for it. Each result carries the methodology version and the date it was last revised. Where an employer states a figure in an advert, that number is labelled as stated and counted as an observation; where a role or function has no supported model, the tools say the range is unavailable rather than borrowing a band from a different role.

What those tools do not do: they do not calculate tax or net pay, they do not cover every role, function or market, and they do not tell you how likely you are to receive a particular offer. A modelled band describes a market, not your package. The arithmetic above is what turns it into a decision.

If you would rather talk a live offer through with someone who sees these structures regularly, that conversation is confidential and does not require you to apply for anything.