Rank #2 · Exceptional opportunity
Europe's quant capital and the main hub for systematic macro and long-horizon systematic funds.
What is the quant market like in London?
60 quant-classified roles are open in London right now across 18 employers, read from their own career pages. Europe's quant capital and the main hub for systematic macro and long-horizon systematic funds. Main demand is in quant research/trading, systematic funds, electronic trading, and compensation sits at roughly 86% of the New York benchmark for the equivalent role and seniority.
KnowQuant research deskUpdated 1 September 2026263 live vacancies in London from 18 employersMethod 2026.1
Local context, written by the desk
London carries both firms trading European venues and firms running research capacity here for books traded elsewhere. Those are different jobs with different hiring profiles, and the firm-published detail below is a starting point for asking which one an opening actually is. Written from the company-published sources listed below and last checked 13 September 2026. This section is editorial: the vacancy counts and pay bands elsewhere on this page are produced separately and labelled there.
G-Research announced 1 Soho Place on 25 May 2023 as a new home for its Research Lab, describing it as its fourth London office and saying researchers and engineers are co-located there. That announcement covers that opening, not the firm's current office footprint. Jane Street's contact page lists its London address as 2 & A Half Devonshire Square. Ask which building a team sits in and what the in-office expectation is, rather than reading a culture off a postcode.
London shows why we keep every genuine function at a quant firm in the index. One London research firm's own vacancy page runs to cyber security, identity and access engineering, analytics engineering, business management and talent sourcing alongside quantitative research. Filtering to core-quant titles alone misses other genuine functions these employers hire for.
Acas guidance for Great Britain distinguishes contractual from discretionary bonuses. Whether a bonus you have been told about is one or the other is worth confirming in writing before accepting. That guidance is specific to Great Britain and says nothing about a US entitlement. It is general information, not legal advice.
Counted from employer career pages, not job boards. These figures move as desks open and close roles, so the split below reflects the employers we track in London rather than the whole market or an annual survey.
Live vacancies
263
Every open role we track in London
Quant-index roles
60
Roles that meet our quant classification rules
Employers hiring
18
Distinct firms with an open seat here
Read live from each employer's own career page. Last full refresh September 2026. Compensation figures on this page are modelled and dated separately from these counts.
Modelled total compensation quoted in GBP. The range spans every seniority we model for the role. The reference estimate is a separately configured modelled figure for the role, not the middle of that range and not an observed median.
| Role | Range | Modelled reference estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Quant Researcher | £154k – £1.7m | £319k |
| Quant Trader | £134k – £2.0m | £302k |
| Quant Developer | £121k – £805k | £228k |
| Quant Analyst | £88k – £491k | £161k |
| HFT / Low-Latency Engineer | £137k – £961k | £264k |
| Systematic Portfolio Manager | £371k – £11m | £926k |
| Software Engineer | £117k – £637k | £205k |
| Machine Learning Engineer | £133k – £995k | £259k |
| Data Engineer | £111k – £570k | £191k |
| Data Scientist | £101k – £416k | £164k |
| Site Reliability Engineer | £111k – £537k | £188k |
| Network and Infrastructure Engineer | £101k – £470k | £168k |
| Security Engineer | £107k – £537k | £184k |
| Trading Operations Analyst | £64k – £335k | £117k |
| Risk Manager | £87k – £503k | £161k |
| Compliance Officer | £74k – £436k | £138k |
| Fund Finance and Accounting | £67k – £503k | £134k |
| Technical Recruiter | £64k – £402k | £124k |
Proprietary trading
quant-trader · quant-researcher · quant-developer
Multi-strategy platform
quant-researcher · quant-developer · quant-trader · portfolio-manager
Proprietary trading
quant-researcher · quant-developer · hft-engineer
Proprietary trading
hft-engineer · quant-researcher · quant-trader
Market maker
quant-trader · quant-developer · hft-engineer · quant-researcher
Market maker
quant-trader · quant-developer · hft-engineer
Proprietary trading
quant-trader · quant-researcher · hft-engineer · quant-developer
Systematic manager
quant-researcher · quant-developer
Systematic manager
quant-researcher · quant-developer · portfolio-manager
Multi-strategy platform
portfolio-manager · quant-researcher · quant-developer
Multi-strategy platform
quant-researcher · portfolio-manager · quant-developer
Market maker
quant-trader · quant-researcher · quant-developer
Systematic manager
quant-researcher · quant-developer · portfolio-manager
Hedge fund
quant-researcher · quant-developer · portfolio-manager
Systematic manager
quant-researcher · quant-developer
Rankings, compensation and hiring firms for each discipline traded in London.
Direct answers, each one tied to the London figures on this page.
Modelled total compensation for a quantitative researcher in London runs £154k – £1.7m across the seniorities we model (GBP), which is about 86% of the New York benchmark for the same role and seniority. Every other role is priced in the table above.
15 of the firms we track run a London desk, including Jane Street, Citadel / Citadel Securities, Hudson River Trading. Each firm profile lists the desks it staffs locally and the disciplines it recruits for.
Quant research/trading, systematic funds, electronic trading. The strategies concentrated here are systematic macro, statistical arbitrage, market making, multi-asset, which shapes both the skills desks screen for and the pay dispersion between them.
London is one of the 17 hub markets we price, and on the roles we currently track it shows exceptional advertised demand. That is our own editorial read of tracked vacancies, not a global ranking of opportunity. Compare the pay index of 86 against local tax and cost of living, and check current official guidance on visas and tax, before treating a headline number as an improvement.
Live roles are read from employer career pages and refreshed continuously. The pay bands carry method 2026.1, last reviewed September 2026, and are frozen each quarter as a dated edition you can cite.
Both, and they are labelled. Where an advert states pay we use the stated figure. Where it does not, the band is modelled from publicly reported compensation data and role benchmarking, and shown as a range rather than a single number.
Each one is a standalone page with the working shown, kept in step with the figures above.
A quant researcher in London earns a median of £319k in annual total compensation, within a full band of £154k to £1.7m.
A quant trader in London earns a median of £302k in annual total compensation, within a full band of £134k to £2.0m.
A quant developer in London earns a median of £228k in annual total compensation, within a full band of £121k to £805k.
A quant analyst in London earns a median of £161k in annual total compensation, within a full band of £88k to £491k.
A hft / low-latency engineer in London earns a median of £264k in annual total compensation, within a full band of £137k to £961k.
A systematic portfolio manager in London earns a median of £926k in annual total compensation, within a full band of £371k to £11m.
Pay, tax drag and hiring depth for London set against the markets it is most often weighed against.
KnowQuant Quant Compensation Benchmark, Q3 2026 edition, method 2026.1. https://www.know-quant.com/markets/london
Free to quote and republish with attribution and a link to the source page, under our terms. Method 2026.1, last reviewed 1 September 2026. The methodology sets out how each band is built and what it excludes.
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Weekly market movements
The dated market call: which desks opened seats, where pay shifted, and which markets tightened. Written by the research desk, sent Monday, and nothing else.
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.
London market report · KnowQuant 2026.1