Jump Trading paying top French quant traders £1m in London
High frequency trading firms will go to great lengths to keep their trading strategies secret. Considering the staggering pay they give to their traders, you can understand why.
A legal dispute last month helpfully revealed the upper limits of pay at Jump Trading in London.
Quantitative trader Damien Couture joined the firm on total compensation of over £1m ($1.26m), consisting of a £175k ($221k) salary, £350k signing bonus and £500k guaranteed bonus.
This was a bit of a special case, however. Couture was educated by legendary french quant Nicole El Karoui and had already spent eight and a half years in algorithmic trading. He spent the two years previous to joining Jump co-founding and acting as CTO of litigation fintech Weclaim. Prior to that, he was at G-Research and SocGen.
So how much can the average Jump quant earn? On jobs forum site Blind, one Jump employee said a $700k TC is "certainly achievable," describing the firm as "tier one for quants," though a little worse at "tier 1.5 for core."
On Glassdoor, the average salary for a quant researcher is £109k in the UK, but the average cash bonus is significantly lower than Couture's total, just $89.1k. The highest bonus reported on the site is £337k, also below Couture's signing bonus.
Jump Trading's rating on Blind is an impressive 4.8 stars. Reviewers praise the pay."If you are a 10x person, you will be payed 10x," gushes one.
One reviewer declares that there are "no a**holes anywhere" at Jump. Some reviews disagree; one says the culture is "worse than big tech" while another complains of "little managerial support."
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