Head to head
Jane Street vs Citadel / Citadel Securities
Jane Street or Citadel / Citadel Securities?
Jane Street is a proprietary trading headquartered in New York; Citadel / Citadel Securities is a multi-strategy platform headquartered in Miami. On indicative total compensation Citadel / Citadel Securities sits roughly 5 percentage points higher against the market median. The larger difference for most candidates is the work itself: etf market making and options at Jane Street, versus multi-strategy and market making at Citadel / Citadel Securities.
| Jane Street | Citadel / Citadel Securities | |
|---|---|---|
| Business model | Proprietary trading | Multi-strategy platform |
| Headquarters | New York | Miami |
| Founded | 2000 | 1990 |
| Comp vs market median | +25% | +30% |
| Offices | New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Amsterdam | New York, Chicago, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Paris, Dubai / Abu Dhabi |
| Strategies | ETF market making, Options, Statistical arbitrage, Fixed income | Multi-strategy, Market making, Equities, Commodities, Fixed income |
| Hires for | Quant Trader, Quant Researcher, Quant Developer | Quant Researcher, Quant Developer, Quant Trader, Systematic Portfolio Manager |
| Interview stages | 4 | 4 |
| Typical backgrounds | Olympiad mathematics, Competitive programming, Physics and mathematics undergraduates, Poker and games backgrounds | PhD research, Top-tier engineering, Lateral hires from peer platforms |
Compensation by role
Indicative mid-level total compensation, US dollars, New York reference market.
| Role | Jane Street | Citadel / Citadel Securities |
|---|---|---|
| Quant Researcher | $575k | $625k |
| Quant Trader | $600k | $600k |
| Quant Developer | $450k | $475k |
| Systematic Portfolio Manager | — | $2.0m |
A dash means we hold no indicative figure for that role at that firm. It is recorded as unknown rather than estimated.
Jane Street
Known for ETF and options market making at scale, an unusually strong graduate pipeline, and a distinctive engineering culture built around OCaml. Entry-level packages are among the highest in the industry, and the firm hires heavily for probabilistic reasoning rather than finance knowledge.
Interview process
- 1. Screening callRecruiter conversation and background discussion.
- 2. Probability and mental mathsFast-paced expected-value and market-making games.
- 3. Technical roundsAlgorithms, problem solving, and for engineers a strong functional-programming component.
- 4. Final / on-siteMultiple interviewers, trading games, and estimation under time pressure.
Citadel / Citadel Securities
Two connected businesses — the hedge fund and the market-making arm — that between them cover almost every quantitative discipline. Compensation is top of market and the performance bar is correspondingly high. The most common destination for senior researchers and portfolio managers changing platform.
Interview process
- 1. Recruiter screenBackground, motivation and compensation expectations.
- 2. Technical screenRole-specific: statistics and modelling for research, systems and C++ for engineering.
- 3. Case / projectOften a data exercise or take-home research problem.
- 4. Super daySequential interviews with researchers, engineers and business stakeholders.
Markets where both compete for talent
Other comparisons
Methodology
Figures are expressed as annual total compensation (base salary plus expected performance bonus) in the reference market's local currency, converted from a US dollar base. They describe typical market ranges rather than any individual offer, and exclude sign-on payments, deferred equity and carried interest. Portfolio-manager figures reflect formulaic profit-share arrangements and are therefore far more dispersed than any other role.
KnowQaunt 2026.1 · Updated September 2026
These are indicative ranges pending first-party verification. They will be replaced by verified submissions as the Quant Salary Index dataset builds.