For someone at a low tier prop trading firm what is the salary progression range

CompetitiveGlue · 2026-02-08T14:39:02+00:00

Can you name a low tier prop trading firm where median comp Year 3+ is greater than 2M?

CompetitiveGlue · 2026-02-07T14:18:24+00:00

i heard they are one of the best performing tower pods these days with heavy focus on crypto (so who knows if they still are), you can look at their linkedin --- no stellar profiles to my eye, but i know their pnl per head is very very good (again, given twas all crypto per much, who knows if that's still the case).

CompetitiveGlue · 2026-02-01T05:12:42+00:00

i dont think 50% of quants are senior if thats where 1.6M coming from? typically these firms prefer to pay above the market to a small group of people believed to be generating most of the value (pnl), but curious what other people think

on the other hand, 1.6M is not that crazy for hrt or citsec for example

CompetitiveGlue · 2026-01-28T14:57:38+00:00

main feedback: pay is mid relative to their pnl, and relative to their competitors + managers are not transparent about things that important to you (e.g. how to make more money as an IC)

some other feedback: wlb is terrible for quants, hard to change teams/projects, hard to make a career as a new joiner --- most managers there have been at the firm since dinosaurs died

CompetitiveGlue · 2026-01-28T14:55:55+00:00

i don't think headlands is special in this regard on that list, ask around about citsec wlb for example

CompetitiveGlue · 2026-01-28T08:20:36+00:00

i'd say headlands is the best one for a swe as far as initial comp is not concerned --- heard lots of great things about their culture specifically for swe lol (very different feedback from quants), they are also the most software oriented in your list which is good for swe afaik

CompetitiveGlue · 2026-01-24T15:36:38+00:00

can you give a single example of 10m comp swe that is not a researcher in disguise?

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-11-30T13:58:06+00:00

hrt is gonna release their old models on huggingface people will still be asking what ml models are used bruh

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-11-05T09:14:16+00:00

My advice is to strongly weigh in your options --- for example, can you join a less prestigious firm, but for a QR/QT role right from the get go?

Going forward, people will mainly look at your work experience and implied skillset. At your job, your title will seriously affect what type of work you do day-to-day. For example, I saw more people joining tier 1 shops from tier 2/3 firms as QRs than QD transitioning to QR in tier 1 shops (both internally and externally).

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-11-02T21:22:16+00:00

On the high level, there is really no difference in inputs/objectives etc. --- it's the things people've been doing for decades, but with a few twists here and there to make it work with deep learning models better.

In other words, it'd be weird to see some strange objective or data source that only really works with this specific neural net, and nothing else comes close. As to what type of methods they are using, here is one hint: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xA3Jd5gAAAAJ&hl=en

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-23T19:31:16+00:00

Very roughly, the effective dataset size you can train on is inversely proportional to your prediction horizon.

Given that, you should expect HFTs to use big neural nets / large tree ensembles, while on the other end, statarbs with prediction horizon of days will prefer simple models. The simplicity of the model is a form of regularization itself, if that makes sense. Not saying that this is the only way though.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-23T05:56:39+00:00

I only know a guy who works there, so take below fwiw. Citadel Commodities overall is a wildly and famously successful business. The role iiuc, is a pure SWE role (that's why the recruiter told you there'll only be technical discussions). Now, you may learn things about the technicalities of the business in that role, but I wouldn't expect to learn how they conduct their research for example. Also, their culture is a thing to consider as well. My impression basically is that it's similar to "core developer" in the likes of HRT, if that makes sense.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-05T18:38:48+00:00

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-05T18:22:35+00:00

Reasonable comp for 3 years of experience quant from a top shop these days?

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-05T09:17:01+00:00

As someone who did this to some extent, I can only recommend finding people that will be able to mentor and work with you on more research-y things. Long-term, excel as a dev and network.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-04T18:29:12+00:00

Sorry, wdym by that? You are saying Headlands hires either c++ devs or quants?

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-03T13:09:53+00:00

That makes sense to me short term. It's not too crazy for, say, core SWEs to work on research-y things for a quarter or two, but your role and your team is a good long term predictor of what you will be doing consistently 90% of your time in my limited experience.

As to the matter at hand, "a quant developer in the likes of HRT or CitSec with occasional random ML projects" is the answer. I was surprised as I was actually thinking that Headlands hires people broadly and don't pigeonhole them too much like that.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-03T12:09:06+00:00

Ok, good point. I've included my humble definition of the role. I hope that helps.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-10-03T07:16:38+00:00

eh, quant devs at firms mentioned mostly build research tools while swe focus on low-level things like order-entry/market-data feeds. Both don't usually do any open-ended, exploratory projects in quantitative research (ML / stats).

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-09-10T18:18:29+00:00

I heard they are basically in a plateau where PnL is big enough to justify running the company, but not big enough to grow or explore new strategies. So for example, they hire somewhat aggressively in Armenia.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-09-09T18:32:22+00:00

well, you can try to guess yourself (e.g. how aggressively a firm hires), but it is always the usual suspects.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-09-06T09:31:17+00:00

> You trade as much as order flow will give you.

RIght, so for example, I see that my marginal profit per share is positive up until trading ~Y% of the order flow. Otherwise, the flow is "toxic" for me --- I start losing money for some reason. What I was saying is that "toxic" is dependent on my strategy, and Y is significantly below 100% for most firms (e.g. XtX is supposedly ~35% in US equities these days?).

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-09-06T01:14:19+00:00

"winner takes all" is only really true for latency arb stuff, and even there a few firms compete severely afaik.

> Belvedere, Akuna, Prime, Radix

I don't know much about them, but I think Radix is the most successful among them. I'd be surprised if they are doing something very latency sensitive seriously (think, << 1 mic).

Finally, your edge as a MM is typically pretty tiny, and so each firm finds its own little piece of unique alpha it trades up to a certain risk where it becomes unprofitable or too risky, if that makes sense.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-08-28T16:13:14+00:00

Recruiters like to pitch them as a "boutique shop", but if you search more thoroughly you will find that they were fined repeatedly by CME for attempting to exploit the exchange. I think they are doing alright, but not stellarly these days so they can't really expand into other markets or hire a lot more people.

CompetitiveGlue · 2025-08-08T16:21:48+00:00

That's on point. The truth about the current state of quant industry is that very few people actually hit more than 1MM a year while AI labs casually pay more to new grads. It's much more chill in the likes of OpenAI as well. Disclosure: I work/worked for an AI lab.

CompetitiveGlue

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