How to earn the biggest money as a quant in New York City

If you're a quant and you want to spend 2020 maximizing your earnings in New York City, recruitment firm Selby Jennings has some pointers for you. Fundamentally, you want to join a top hedge fund.

Selby Jennings' North American quant team have just released their salary and bonus survey for 2020. The best paying jobs are almost always on the buy-side.

If you're a freshly graduated STEM (science, technology engineering or mathematics) PhD, Selby Jennings says you can earn between $300k and $400k in total compensation (combined salary and bonus) at a top hedge fund or independent trading firm. This compares to $180k to $220k at a U.S. investment bank, $200k to $300k at a middling hedge fund, or $250k to $300k at a FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google)-type technology company.

What's a top hedge fund? Selby Jennings doesn't say, but Millennium or Citadel should be somewhere on your list. As we reported last month, Citadel has been offering $200k salaries alone to data scientists on H1B Visas. 

Citadel suggests hedge funds (on the buy-side) continue to pay their quants more than investment banks (on the sell-side) right up through the pay hierarchy. It helps that quants in buy-side trading roles get a cut of up to 50% of their pnl.

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