QUANT INTERN PAY IN 2026

Checked against employer postings and DOL filings on 21 September 2026. Every figure below is labelled with where it came from. Where a firm publishes nothing, this guide says so instead of filling the gap with an estimate.

Jane Street's internship posting says "Base salary is $300,000." Susquehanna's says $8,600 a week. Those two numbers get quoted side by side constantly, and almost nobody converts them. When you do, the ranking flips: $300,000 a year is $5,769 a week, which makes Jane Street the lowest weekly payer of the firms on this page, and Susquehanna the highest by about 49%.

What top quant firms pay interns in 2026

Below is every firm whose intern compensation could be traced to a named source, converted to a weekly rate. Colour shows how solid the source is. Green is the firm's own posting, amber is a press report, magenta is candidate reports with no employer confirmation.

Two things stand out. The spread between the top and bottom disclosed rate is under 2x, which is narrow for a field that talks about pay as much as this one does. And the firm with the most famous number is not near the top.

Weekly rate is the number to compare

Firms quote intern pay in whichever unit flatters them. Jane Street quotes an annualised salary. Susquehanna and Citadel Securities quote a weekly rate. An annualised figure is the bigger-sounding one, and it describes money no intern will ever receive, because the internship lasts ten to fourteen weeks.

Converted to what actually lands, for base pay alone:

Jane Street's longer program does most of the work of closing the gap. Fourteen weeks at a lower rate nearly matches ten weeks at the highest one. If you are choosing between offers, the length of the program is as load-bearing as the rate.

Average quant intern pay in 2026

Across the six disclosed rates above, the mean is $6,714 a week and the median is $5,800. The median is the more useful of the two here, because the mean is pulled upward by Susquehanna's two figures sitting at the top of the list.

A reasonable planning number for a top-tier quant internship in the United States in 2026: $5,800 a week, about $58,000 over ten weeks in base pay, with housing and a signing bonus on top at most firms. Anything materially below $4,500 a week is outside the range these firms are posting.

What the headline number leaves out

Base is the part that gets published, and at these programs it is not the whole package. The extras are unevenly distributed and rarely make it into comparison tables:

• Housing. Susquehanna provides it free, along with breakfast and lunch. Citadel Securities provides corporate housing. Jane Street's posting mentions none, which does not prove none is offered, only that it is not promised in writing. In Manhattan a summer sublet runs well past $4,000 a month, so free housing is worth roughly $1,000 a week and closes most of the gap between a $5,800 offer and a $6,800 one.
• Signing bonus. Reported at $25,000 for Hudson River Trading interns, and attached to some Susquehanna undergraduate offers. On a ten-week program a $25,000 signing bonus is worth more than $2,000 a week, which is larger than the entire spread between most firms' base rates.
• Program length. Four extra weeks at $5,769 is $23,000. Length is quietly one of the biggest levers in the whole comparison.

Add those up and the ranking by base pay stops predicting the ranking by money in hand. A $5,800 week with free housing and a signing bonus beats an $8,600 week with neither.

The most competitive programs

Pay and selectivity move together at the top of this list, though not perfectly. The firms paying the most are the ones running the smallest cohorts against the largest applicant pools, and they filter early with a timed online assessment before a human reads anything.

None of these firms publish an acceptance rate, so any specific percentage you see quoted is somebody's estimate. What is observable is the shape of the funnel: a mental-math or probability screen that most of the field does not clear, then two or three rounds that are almost entirely technical. Our breakdown of what quant firms test covers how the weighting differs between a market maker and a hedge fund.

The practical consequence for an applicant is that the pay difference between these firms is small enough to ignore while you are applying. The difference between clearing the first screen and not clearing it is the entire outcome.

How the largest firms compare

Size and pay are close to uncorrelated in this group. Citadel Securities and Jane Street are among the largest firms here by headcount and revenue, and both post intern rates at or below the median. Susquehanna, smaller than either, posts the highest. Five Rings, the smallest firm on this page, publishes nothing at all.

What size does predict is the number of seats. A larger firm runs a larger summer class across more offices, which is worth more to an applicant than a few hundred dollars a week.

Intern pay outside the United States

The figures above are US programs. London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Sydney all pay less in nominal terms, and the gap narrows considerably after tax and cost of living. The Netherlands' 30% ruling for qualifying international hires is the single largest adjustment.

One structural point explains why US numbers are so much easier to verify: New York State requires a good-faith pay range on job postings for work performed in the state. London and Amsterdam have no equivalent, so almost nothing there is employer-published and the available figures are candidate reports.

How to read a quant intern offer

Four questions, in the order that changes the answer most:

1. Is the number weekly or annualised? Multiply the weekly rate by the number of weeks. Ignore the annualised figure entirely; it describes a year you will not work.
2. How many weeks? Ten versus fourteen is a 40% difference in total pay at the same rate.
3. Is housing provided, subsidised, or yours? Price the difference at local market rent, not at whatever stipend is offered.
4. What is the return-offer rate? Nobody publishes it, but it is worth asking directly on the call. The internship is a hiring funnel, and a summer that converts is worth more than a summer that pays 15% better.

How these figures were sourced

Most quant salary pages run on aggregator estimates. Those estimates are modelled from small, self-selected samples and they drift badly at the top of the market. Glassdoor listed an estimated average of $428,021 for a Jane Street quant trader intern, built from one submitted salary, against the $300,000 the firm states on its own posting. The estimate is off by more than 40% in the direction that gets clicks.

This page prefers sources in a fixed order: what the employer publishes, then what it files with the government, then named press reporting, then candidate reports, and it labels every figure with which one it used.

Two consequences worth stating plainly. Employer-published figures exist mostly because pay-transparency law forces them to, which is why US numbers are firm and non-US numbers are not. And where a firm publishes nothing, this page leaves the cell empty. Five Rings' own postings carried no compensation range when checked, so no figure appears for it here.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• Quant salary guide 2026 — full-time pay by role, level and firm, from the same sources.
• Quant trader vs researcher vs developer — which of the three internships you should be applying to.
• How to prepare for quant online assessments — the screen that decides most of these applications.
• Jane Street salary — the full-time side of the $300,000 number.
• Citadel Securities salary — what the posted intern range turns into after a return offer.
• Jane Street trading interview guide — what the firm publishes about its own process.