— GUIDE —
JANE STREET SALARY IN 2026
What Jane Street pays traders, researchers and interns, taken from the firm's own posting and its filings with the US Department of Labor.
UPDATED 2026-09-21 · 10 MIN READ · BY THE VARIANCE TEAM
Jane Street publishes a base salary and says nothing at all about bonuses. That makes this one of the few quant pay questions with a real answer and a clearly marked edge to it.
Checked against Jane Street's careers site and DOL disclosure data on 21 September 2026. Every figure is labelled with where it came from. Jane Street publishes a base salary and nothing about bonuses, so this page does not invent one.
Two numbers circulate for Jane Street. One is $300,000, which the firm prints on its own internship posting. The other is somewhere north of $400,000, which comes from salary aggregators. The gap is not a disagreement about the market. It is the difference between a figure an employer published and a figure a model produced from a handful of self-reports.
What Jane Street pays: base salary, 2025 filings
Jane Street sponsors H-1B hires, which means it files a Labor Condition Application with the Department of Labor stating the base salary for each role. Those filings are public. For fiscal year 2025 they show a flat $300,000 across the titles that matter here.
The chart below places those filings next to peer firms. Only rows with at least three filings behind them are shown, because the same dataset contains single-filing outliers that get quoted as if they were market rates.
| Firm | Median base | Filings | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jane Street — Trader | $300,000 | 13 filings | US DOL filing |
| Jane Street — Researcher | $300,000 | 3 filings | US DOL filing |
| Jump Trading — Quantitative Trader | $300,000 | 3 filings | US DOL filing |
| Five Rings — Quantitative Researcher | $300,000 | 9 filings | US DOL filing |
| Citadel Securities — Quantitative Trader | $262,500 | 4 filings | US DOL filing |
| Citadel Securities — Quantitative Researcher | $250,000 | 43 filings | US DOL filing |
| Jump Trading — Quantitative Researcher | $250,000 | 12 filings | US DOL filing |
| Two Sigma — Quantitative Researcher | $235,000 | 49 filings | US DOL filing |
| Hudson River Trading — Core Developer | $185,000 | 16 filings | US DOL filing |
| Optiver — Quantitative Researcher | $150,000 | 15 filings | US DOL filing |
| Optiver — Trader | $150,000 | 8 filings | US DOL filing |
Jane Street sits at the top of the group with a meaningful sample behind it. Ubiquant filed a higher number, but once, and Quiet Capital filed twice; neither appears above for that reason.
Traders and researchers are paid the same base
This is the part of the filing data worth stopping on. Three different job families, filed separately, all at exactly $300,000. Not a close spread. The identical number.
| Title as filed | Base | Filings |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | $300,000 | 19 |
| Trader | $300,000 | 13 |
| Researcher | $300,000 | 3 |
| At the flat base | $300,000 | 35 |
One scope note, because it is the kind of thing other salary pages get wrong. Those 35 records are a subset of Jane Street's 48 filings for the year. The remaining 13 cover non-core functions — operations engineering, production engineering, data centre and security roles — and those range from about $150,000 to $300,000. The flat band is real for the technical core, not for the whole firm.
A flat base band tells you where the firm puts its variable money. Candidates often try to pick between the trading and research tracks on the assumption that one pays better. At the starting line, on the only component anyone can verify, it does not. The difference between the two careers is the bonus and the ceiling, neither of which is published.
The $300,000 internship number, converted
Jane Street's New York Quantitative Trader Internship posting states "Base salary is $300,000." That is an annualised rate. The internship runs roughly fourteen weeks, May to August, so what actually lands is:
| As quoted | Per week | Weeks | Base for the summer |
|---|---|---|---|
| $300,000 annualised | $5,769 | 14 | $80,766 |
$5,769 a week is a genuinely strong internship rate and it is also lower than several firms that quote a smaller-sounding headline. Susquehanna posts $8,600 a week for master's and PhD interns, about 49% more per week than Jane Street, while never printing a six-figure number. The unit does the work.
Worth noting what the posting does not say. It states the base salary and stops there: no housing, no relocation, no signing bonus. Several firms on the comparison list do state those, and they are worth real money in New York, so the weekly rate understates the gap in both directions. The full comparison is in the quant intern pay guide.
Base is not the package
Everything above is base salary. LCA filings capture base by design, and Jane Street's posting says "base salary" in as many words. At a proprietary trading firm the discretionary bonus is usually the larger half of the package, and base typically runs 30% to 50% of total compensation.
| Filed base | If base is 50% | If base is 40% | If base is 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jane Street, Trader and Researcher$300,000 | $600,000 | $750,000 | $1,000,000 |
Read across, not down. The same base produces a wide spread of totals, which is why a base-only chart cannot rank two firms against each other.
Nobody publishes a bonus schedule, so the only available shape of the curve is candidate-reported:
| Level | Years | Trader total | Researcher total |
|---|---|---|---|
| New graduate | Year 1 | $250k–$450k | $225k–$400k |
| Mid-level | Roughly years 3–6 | $400k–$800k | $350k–$700k |
| Senior | Roughly years 7+ | $600k–$1.5M+ | $500k–$1.2M+ |
These are self-reports aggregated by third parties, not filings. The ranges are wide because they genuinely are: two traders at the same desk in the same year can be a long way apart.
London and the documentation gap
Jane Street's London office is large and pays competitively, and almost nothing about it is verifiable. New York State requires a good-faith pay range on postings for work performed in the state, which is the reason US figures on this page are firm. The UK has no equivalent. Neither does the Netherlands.
Candidate reports put first-year graduate trader total compensation in the £250,000 to £500,000 range. Treat that as an order of magnitude. The wider comparison across cities, including why the nominal gap between New York and Amsterdam overstates the real one, is in the pay by city guide.
Why aggregator estimates run 40% high
Glassdoor listed an estimated average of $428,021 for a Jane Street quantitative trader intern. The sample behind it was one submitted salary. The firm's own posting says $300,000. The estimate is off by roughly 43%, in the direction that gets clicks.
This is not a quirk of one listing. Aggregator estimates are modelled from small, self-selected samples, and self-selection at the top of the market runs one way: people report the good year. A candidate who used that $428,021 figure to anchor a negotiation would be arguing against a number the firm has published.
How these figures were sourced
Sources are preferred in a fixed order: what the employer publishes, then what it files with the government, then named press reporting, then candidate reports. Every figure on this page carries the label of which one it came from.
- Employer-published
- Published by the employer on its own job posting or careers site.
- US DOL filing
- Labor Condition Application disclosure data filed with the US Department of Labor ahead of an H-1B petition. Base salary only.
- Press report
- Reported by a named publication with an editorial standard.
- Candidate-reported
- Self-reported by candidates and aggregated by a third party. Unverified and prone to selection bias.
Two limits worth stating. LCA filings only capture sponsored hires, so employees on a green card, on an O-1A, or hired out of a US undergraduate pipeline are invisible to the dataset, and those groups include many of the highest earners. And a median over three filings is not a market rate, which is why the record count sits next to every figure here rather than in a footnote.
Where these numbers come from
Employer-published
Jane Street careers site, Quantitative Trader Internship (May–August)
The posting states "Base salary is $300,000." Jane Street quotes interns an annualised rate rather than a weekly one.
Last checked 2026-09-21
US DOL filing
US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data, via h1bdata.info
Employers file a Labor Condition Application before petitioning for an H-1B. The filings are public.
Last checked 2026-09-21
Candidate-reported
Aggregated candidate self-reports via levels.fyi, Glassdoor and Wall Street Oasis
No quant firm publishes a bonus schedule and LCA filings capture base only, so total-compensation figures at every level are candidate-reported. Ranges are wide because they genuinely are.
Last checked 2026-09-21
Candidate-reported
Glassdoor, Jane Street quantitative trader intern estimate
Listed an estimated average of $428,021 built from a single submitted salary, against the $300,000 Jane Street publishes on its own posting.
Last checked 2026-09-21
Candidate-reported
Aggregated candidate reports, Jane Street London
First-year graduate trader total compensation reported in the £250k-£500k range. The UK has no pay-transparency requirement, so nothing here is employer-published.
Last checked 2026-09-21
Frequently asked questions
How much does Jane Street pay?
Jane Street filed a $300,000 median base salary with the US Department of Labor in fiscal year 2025 for both Trader (13 filings) and Researcher (3 filings) roles in New York. Base is only 30% to 50% of a quant package at a firm like this, so total compensation for a first-year trader is typically well above that, but no employer publishes a bonus schedule and Jane Street is no exception.
Does Jane Street pay interns $300,000?
Jane Street's own posting for the New York Quantitative Trader Internship states "Base salary is $300,000." That is an annualised rate, not the amount an intern receives. At $300,000 a year the weekly equivalent is about $5,769, so a fourteen-week May-to-August internship comes to roughly $80,800 in base pay. The posting states the salary and nothing else — no housing, relocation or signing bonus is mentioned.
Does Jane Street pay traders more than researchers?
Not in base salary. The 2025 Department of Labor filings show a $300,000 median for both the Trader and the Researcher title, with no gap between them. Any difference between the two paths shows up in the discretionary bonus, which is not disclosed anywhere.
Why do salary sites show Jane Street paying more than $400,000?
Because they model estimates from small self-selected samples. Glassdoor listed an estimated average of $428,021 for a Jane Street quantitative trader intern built from one submitted salary, roughly 43% above the $300,000 the firm states on its own posting. When an employer publishes a figure, that figure wins.
What does Jane Street pay in London?
Nothing verifiable. The UK has no pay-transparency requirement and Jane Street does not publish London ranges, so every circulating figure is a candidate report. Those reports cluster in the £250,000 to £500,000 range for first-year graduate traders, which should be read as the shape of the market rather than as a number.
Is the $300,000 figure base or total compensation?
Base. Labor Condition Application filings capture base salary only, by design, and Jane Street's internship posting says "base salary" explicitly. At a proprietary trading firm the discretionary bonus is usually the larger half of the package, so treat $300,000 as a floor rather than as an offer.
Keep reading
- Jane Street trading interview guide — the process behind the offer, using what the firm publishes about it.
- Citadel Securities salary — the same treatment for the other firm with a published intern range.
- Optiver salary — the other flat band, at half the level.
- Quant salary guide 2026 — the full picture across firms, titles and levels.
- Quant intern pay in 2026 — every disclosed intern rate converted to a common weekly basis.