Careers · Entry routes
Quant internships
How does a quant internship work?
A quant internship at a trading firm or systematic fund is a paid summer placement, usually eight to eleven weeks, in one of the firm's actual functions: research, trading, or software engineering. Selection runs through the same style of loop the firm uses for graduates, weighted towards probability, mental arithmetic and programming rather than finance knowledge. Applications for a summer place typically open in the autumn of the preceding academic year and close when the cohort is filled, so the deadline is effectively the intake, not the published date.
What the selection actually tests
Internship loops mirror the firm's full-time process at a shorter length. Where a firm publishes its stages we set them out in full, firm by firm, rather than describing one industry-standard process that does not exist.
- Jane Street interview process
4 published stages. Hires into 6 markets.
- Citadel interview process
4 published stages. Hires into 7 markets.
- Hudson River Trading interview process
3 published stages. Hires into 5 markets.
- Optiver interview process
3 published stages. Hires into 6 markets.
- Jump Trading interview process
3 published stages. Hires into 8 markets.
- Two Sigma interview process
4 published stages. Hires into 4 markets.
Which function should you apply to?
The three internship families are not interchangeable. Research places select on the ability to frame and test a hypothesis, trading places on expected value under time pressure, engineering places on programming depth and systems reasoning. Applying to the wrong one is the most common avoidable rejection.
Quant firms also intern into data, infrastructure and business functions. Those places exist and are recruited separately from the core quant intake, so search by function rather than assuming a single programme.
Live internship vacancies
We do not publish an internship calendar, because opening dates change and a stale date is worse than none. What we can show is what is advertised right now on the career pages we read. The search below runs live against those vacancies, so an empty result means nothing matching is advertised today, not that the programme does not exist.
Search live internship vacanciesWhat internships pay
Internship pay is usually quoted as a weekly or monthly rate pro-rated from the graduate band, plus housing in some firms. We do not model intern rates separately, so rather than publish an estimate we cannot support, use the graduate-entry bands on the salary pages as the reference point and treat the intern rate as a fraction of them.
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.
KnowQuantIndex 2026.1 · Updated September 2026
Modelled bands describe the market, not an individual offer. Where an employer states pay, the stated figure is used and labelled as such.
Live opportunities
Open entry-level and internship routes
Open vacancies we track at quant firms, grouped by role and city. Adverts are anonymised.
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Ask what a firm really pays, how a desk hires, or where your profile sits. One reply from the research desk, in confidence, no obligation.