The U.S. banks that are boosting tech hiring in New York. Those that aren’t

As evidenced by recent ‘near-shoring’ efforts by Deutsche Bank and Barclays, many big investment banks continue to move technology roles away from New York. That said, it’s not possible to migrate all tech jobs outside of Manhattan, where employees whose responsibilities touch the front-office often need to be located. So, which firms are still adding to their ranks in New York?

Three U.S. banks – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America – have all increased the number of tech-related job postings housed in New York since we last collated the numbers in the beginning of April. As you can see in the chart below, Goldman and Morgan Stanley have seen their tech openings increase by at least 50% since the spring while Bank of America’s growth has been more modest.

A quick perusing of Goldman’s career site suggests the bank needs help with its electronic equities platform; more than 20 of the 113 current New York tech openings mention the word equities. This makes sense as Goldman has highlighted several times this year the importance of migrating to its electronic equities platform. Plus, the bank has seen several people depart the team in recent months. Unsurprisingly, Goldman is also looking for additional quants, strats and senior members of its consumer-focused Marcus team. The bank has also got a new high-speed trading project called Atlas, which targets quant funds. It's been hiring researchers and quants to improve its algorithms.

On the other hand, the real eye-opening number concerns J.P. Morgan, which has seen its New York tech vacancies (including its Brooklyn office) fall from 92 in April to 67 in August. What’s more, in November of 2018, J.P. Morgan was advertising 143 New York tech positions. And it’s not like the bank is just shipping jobs over the river to its Jersey City location that houses hundreds of back-office employees. The number of tech vacancies in New Jersey shrank from 98 in early April to 62 this week (and down from 175 in November of last year).

There are a number of possible reasons for the disappearance of local tech openings for J.P. Morgan. One of the more likely is the fact that JPM is set to open a fintech-centric office in Palo Alto, California, where it will house artificial intelligence developers and other next-gen engineers. It may be waiting for the grand opening next year to fill its coffers with more tech employees. 

Either way, now is likely the best time to jump if you work in tech and are looking to join a big bank, either in New York or elsewhere. Our analysis suggests that tech job postings hit their annual peak in late summer.