— GUIDE —
QUANT SALARY GUIDE 2026
What quants earn, separated into the part that is documented and the part that is estimated — because the gap between those two is most of the package.
UPDATED 2026-10-08 · 14 MIN READ · BY THE VARIANCE TEAM
Article reviewed 8 October 2026. Historical tables retain the data periods and source-check dates shown below. Filing-derived numbers are a selected snapshot, not current offers; candidate-reported totals are unverified reports. An article update does not refresh the underlying dataset.
Checked against US Department of Labor filings and employer postings on 21 September 2026. Base salaries here are verifiable. Total compensation is not, and this guide keeps the two apart rather than blending them into one range.
Almost every quant salary page online quotes a total compensation range with no source behind it. There is a reason for that. The cited filings do not disclose discretionary bonuses. So the honest version of this page has two halves: the part that can be checked against a document, and the part that is an informed estimate. Below, they are labelled.
Base salary and total compensation are different questions
Filed or posted base salary does not determine total compensation. A discretionary bonus can vary by firm, role and year, and can be zero. This guide does not estimate total pay by multiplying base salary.
Base is documented. US employers must file a Labor Condition Application with the Department of Labor before petitioning for an H-1B, and those filings are public and name the exact base salary. The filings do not establish discretionary bonus amounts.
Quant base salary by firm: selected FY2025 filings
Median filed base salary, fiscal year 2025 Department of Labor data. The record count matters: a $399,000 median over one filing is a data point, not a market rate, and the table shows both numbers so you can tell the difference.
| Firm | Median base | Filings | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubiquant US Tech — Quantitative Trader | $399,000 | 1 filing | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Quiet Capital Management — Quantitative Researcher | $350,000 | 2 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Jane Street — Trader | $300,000 | 13 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Jane Street — Researcher | $300,000 | 3 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Jump Trading — Quantitative Trader | $300,000 | 3 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Five Rings — Quantitative Researcher | $300,000 | 9 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| TGS Management — Quantitative Researcher | $275,000 | 1 filing | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Citadel Securities — Quantitative Trader | $262,500 | 4 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Citadel Securities — Quantitative Researcher | $250,000 | 43 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Jump Trading — Quantitative Researcher | $250,000 | 12 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Two Sigma — Quantitative Researcher | $235,000 | 49 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Hudson River Trading — Core Developer | $185,000 | 16 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Optiver — Quantitative Researcher | $150,000 | 15 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
| Optiver — Trader | $150,000 | 8 filings | DOL-derived filing snapshot |
Jane Street is the cleanest case in the dataset. Its Software Engineer (19 filings), Trader (13) and Researcher (3) titles all sit at exactly $300,000 — three different job families, 35 records, one number. The firm appears to run a single flat base across technical staff and to differentiate entirely through bonus. The other 13 of its 48 filings for the year are non-core functions, and those do vary.
Optiver anchors the bottom of the chart at $150,000, flat across researcher, trader and engineer titles, and it filed the same $150,000 in 2024. Do not read that as Optiver paying half of Jane Street. It is a low-base, bonus-weighted structure, and a filing has no field for a bonus. The Optiver pay page works through what the number can and cannot support.
The spread across a single row is the point. A filed base of $250,000 is consistent with a $500,000 package and an $833,333 one, and nothing in the filing distinguishes them. Use the historical base as context, not as a guaranteed new offer or a ranking of total pay.
Citadel Securities splits by office. Across all 126 of its fiscal year 2025 filings, the New York median is $225,000 over 69 records and the Miami median is $250,000 over 56. Miami paying above New York is not an error, and Florida charges no state income tax on top of it.
Average quant pay in 2026
Across all employers, the two core titles land in the same place. The median filed base for both Quantitative Researcher and Quantitative Trader is $200,000.
Quantitative Researcher · 356 filings
| Base salary band | Share of filings |
|---|---|
| Above $200k | 53% |
| $150k–$200k | 27% |
| $100k–$150k | 17% |
| Below $100k | 3% |
Quantitative Trader · 46 filings
| Base salary band | Share of filings |
|---|---|
| Above $200k | 61% |
| $150k–$200k | 26% |
| $100k–$150k | 13% |
The trader distribution is shifted upward: 61% of trader filings clear $200,000 against 53% of researcher filings, and no trader filing falls below $100,000 while 3% of researcher filings do. Researcher is also a much broader title, with 356 filings against 46, and it stretches across firms that are not paying anything like prop-shop money.
The filings are concentrated in a few cities. Researcher filings run New York (220), Chicago (49), Miami (33). Trader filings are split almost evenly between Chicago (22) and New York (21), which reflects how much of US market-making sits in Chicago.
Total compensation by level
This is the estimated half of the page. Every figure below is candidate-reported, because nothing better exists.
| Firm | Midpoint of reported range | Reported range | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior trader | $1.1M | $600k–$1.5M+ | Candidate-reported |
| Senior researcher | $850k | $500k–$1.2M+ | Candidate-reported |
| Mid-level trader | $600k | $400k–$800k | Candidate-reported |
| Mid-level researcher | $525k | $350k–$700k | Candidate-reported |
| New graduate trader | $350k | $250k–$450k | Candidate-reported |
| New graduate researcher | $313k | $225k–$400k | Candidate-reported |
| Level | Experience | 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+ |
The ranges are wide because the outcomes genuinely are. Trader pay tracks live P&L, so two people hired the same year into the same seat can be a factor of three apart by year five. Researcher pay tracks the value of shipped research and moves more slowly in both directions.
The most competitive firms to get into
Pay and selectivity are correlated but not identical, and the ranking by difficulty is not the ranking by money. Jane Street, Citadel Securities, Hudson River Trading, Jump and Optiver run the largest applicant pools against small graduate classes, and all of them filter first with a timed online assessment.
None publish an acceptance rate, so any percentage quoted elsewhere is an estimate. What is worth knowing is that the first filter is mechanical and the same across firms: speed and accuracy under a clock, before anyone reads your CV properly. Our guide to quant online assessments covers that stage.
How the largest firms compare
Among the biggest names, filed base converges tightly. Jane Street at $300,000, Jump Trading at $300,000 for traders and $250,000 for researchers, Citadel Securities at $250,000 for researchers, Two Sigma at $235,000 across 49 filings. That is a spread of well under 30% between firms whose total packages differ far more than that.
Which is the point: at the top of this market, base is close to a commodity and the bonus is where firms actually compete. Comparing two offers on base alone will mislead you.
Where the data is missing, and why
The gaps in the filing data are as informative as the figures. Two examples from fiscal 2025:
- Hudson River Trading filed 31 records and not one carries a Trader or Quantitative Researcher title. Its filings are almost entirely "Core Developer" at $185,000. HRT plainly employs traders; it is not sponsoring them through this route.
- Optiver US LLC filed nothing at all in 2025. A firm absent from the dataset tells you about its visa practice, not its payroll.
Read the absence of a firm as missing data. It is the most common way this dataset gets misread.
How these figures were sourced
- Employer-published
- Published by the employer on its own job posting or careers site.
- DOL-derived filing snapshot
- 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.
Base figures come from Labor Condition Application disclosures filed with the US Department of Labor. Before quoting any of them, four caveats apply:
- These tables summarize filed wage figures for selected roles. They do not disclose discretionary bonus or establish a new offer. No fixed multiplier converts a filing into total compensation.
- Only sponsored hires appear. Employees on a green card, on an O-1A, or hired straight out of a US undergraduate pipeline are invisible to the dataset, so this is not representative of every employee or new graduate.
- Coverage is uneven by title, not just by firm. Hudson River Trading filed 31 records in 2025 and not one of them carries a Trader or Quantitative Researcher title, so HRT looks like a $185,000 developer shop in this dataset and is nothing of the sort. Searching a firm's trading name also matters: filings sit under legal entities such as Jump Operations LLC and Optiver Services US LLC, and a search that misses the entity returns zero records that read like an absence.
- A median over a handful of filings is not a market rate. Record counts are shown next to every figure here for that reason.
Total compensation figures are candidate-reported and carry no such documentary backing. They are included because leaving them out would misrepresent the job, not because they are solid.
Where these numbers come from
DOL-derived filing snapshot
US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data, via h1bdata.info
Selected historical records accessed through h1bdata.info, a secondary mirror. Original source: US Department of Labor disclosure files. Previously checked 2026-09-21; the snapshot was not independently regenerated in the 2026-10-08 article review.
Last checked 2026-09-21
Candidate-reported
Aggregated candidate self-reports via levels.fyi, Glassdoor and Wall Street Oasis
Historical candidate-reported ranges, not employer-verified totals. The linked company-level source does not validate every role or career-level range; use the ranges as context, not a forecast or ranking.
Last checked 2026-09-21
Frequently asked questions
How much do quants make in 2026?
Base salary for a quantitative researcher or trader at a top US firm clusters between $200,000 and $300,000, which is verifiable from Department of Labor filings. This is historical base-pay context, not total compensation or a guaranteed new offer. The sources do not establish the discretionary bonus.
What is the average quant salary?
Across 356 Quantitative Researcher filings with the US Department of Labor in fiscal 2025, the median base salary is $200,000, with 53% above $200,000. Across 46 Quantitative Trader filings the median is also $200,000, with 61% above $200,000. These are base only and exclude bonus.
Which quant firm pays the most?
On filed base salary, Jane Street is the highest of the large firms, at a flat $300,000 for Trader and Researcher titles. Five Rings also files $300,000 for Quantitative Researcher across nine records, and Jump Trading files $300,000 for Quantitative Trader. Base is not the same as total pay, and the firms differ more on bonus than on base.
How much of quant pay is bonus?
The cited filings do not establish a universal bonus share. Bonus may vary by role, performance and year, and may be zero. Do not infer total pay from a fixed base-salary multiplier.
Do quant traders or quant researchers earn more?
Traders edge ahead at every level in reported totals, and the gap widens with seniority: roughly $250k-$450k versus $225k-$400k for new graduates, and $600k-$1.5M+ versus $500k-$1.2M+ at senior level. Trader pay tracks live P&L and is more volatile year to year; researcher pay is steadier. At entry level the firm matters far more than the title.
Are quant salary figures on Glassdoor accurate?
Often not, at the top of the market. Glassdoor published an estimated average of $428,021 for a Jane Street quant trader intern derived from one submitted salary, against the $300,000 the firm states on its own posting. Aggregator estimates are modelled over small self-selected samples and tend to overstate. Prefer employer postings and government filings where they exist.
Keep reading
- Jane Street salary — the flat $300,000 base, the internship number converted, and the aggregator gap.
- Optiver salary — a lower filed base in this snapshot, without an inference about total pay.
- Citadel Securities salary — the posted intern range, the 43-filing researcher median, and Miami versus New York.
- Quant intern pay in 2026 — weekly rates, program length and housing, from employer postings.
- Quant pay by city: New York, London, Amsterdam — why non-US figures look lower and how much of the gap is real.
- Quant trader vs researcher vs developer — how the three roles differ beyond the pay line.
- How to get into quant finance — the routes in, and which ones are still open.
Data period and verification limits
The filing tables use a selected historical FY2025 snapshot, originally checked 21 September 2026 through h1bdata.info, a secondary mirror of DOL-derived records. The original disclosure files could not be independently regenerated in this review. This is not a census of all quant employees or a 2026 market-wide salary estimate.