Quant salaries: what the adverts actually say

Most quant adverts do not mention money

That is the first thing to understand about quant compensation data. In our dataset only a minority of open vacancies state a salary range. Firms that must publish pay generally do so because of local pay-transparency rules, not because they want to. Any published "average quant salary" is therefore built from a self-selecting slice of the market.

We publish the slice and the sample size rather than smoothing over it.

Base is not the number that matters

In this market, base pay is the floor and bonus is the story. Research and trading seats at the strongest firms pay bonuses that can exceed base several times over in a good year, and shrink hard in a bad one. Quant development pay is steadier and lower in variance.

When you compare offers, compare three things: guaranteed cash, the bonus mechanism, and how the bonus has actually paid over the last three years for people at your level.

What moves the number

• Seniority. The steepest jump is usually from the second seat to the third, not from graduate to second.
• Seat type. P&L-attributable roles pay more and swing more.
• City. New York and London dominate the advertised data; Chicago, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Singapore each behave as their own markets.
• Firm type. Proprietary trading firms and market makers pay differently from multi-strategy platforms, which pay differently again from banks.

How to read our figures

Every salary page states the median advertised range, the number of adverts behind it, and a confidence band. Where we hold fewer than a handful of adverts we say the evidence is insufficient rather than printing a number that looks precise.

Treat all of it as indicative. It describes what employers advertise, not what individuals are paid.