Quantitative Analyst Salary

What a quant does

A quantitative analyst turns a financial question into a model that can be computed. Depending on the employer, that can mean working out what a complex product is worth, measuring how much a portfolio could lose, writing the code that sends orders, or looking for patterns in data that might become a trading rule. Most of the work is a mix of probability, statistics, programming and a sound feel for how markets break the assumptions of the maths.

The main kinds of role

Titles differ between firms, so read the job description rather than the title. The common groups are these.

• Quant researcher. Looks for rules or signals in data, tests them and judges whether they are real. Closest to what this site calls backtesting. See backtesting and overfitting.
• Quant developer. Builds and runs the software: data systems, test tools and the code that places orders. More programming and engineering than maths.
• Quant trader. Runs a model or a book of positions and manages the risk of it day to day.
• Risk or model validation quant. Measures the risk a firm is taking and checks other people's models for errors. See value at risk.
• Pricing quant. Builds the models that value products such as options.

What drives pay

• The role. Roles close to trading results usually have pay that depends more on those results than roles in support or control. This is a general pattern and it is not a promise.
• The kind of employer. Banks, funds, trading firms, software firms and universities all pay in different ways.
• Location. City and country change both the level of pay and its tax treatment.
• Experience and track record. A person who has shown results over several years is judged differently from a graduate.
• Skills. Strong programming, statistics and the ability to explain a model to people who are not mathematicians all matter.
• Bonus and profit share. At many employers a large part of total pay is not fixed. See the example below.

Worked example: why total pay swings

All numbers here are an invented index, not money and not a real pay level. A person has a fixed base of 100 units. Their bonus is a multiple of the base that depends on how the year went: 0.2, 0.6, 1.5 or 3.0. These multiples are made up to show the shape, and real arrangements differ by employer.

Calculated by us on 31 Oct 2026, exact for the made-up inputs. The total goes from 120 to 400 with the base unchanged, and the bonus is 17 percent of total in the weak year and 75 percent in the very strong year. Raising the base by 10 units adds 10 to every year, which is a bigger relative change in the weak year (8.3 percent) than in the very strong year (2.5 percent). Two jobs with the same average total can therefore feel very different: one is steady and one swings.

How to read a salary survey

1. Check whether the figure is base pay or total pay with bonus.
2. Check the year it was collected, and the country and currency.
3. Check who answered and how many. A small group of self-reported figures is a weak guide.
4. Check the role: researcher, developer, trader and risk quant are different jobs under one word.
5. Check whether it shows an average, a middle value or a range. A few very large figures raise an average a lot.

What to know before you chase the number

• Pay that depends on results can be zero or small in a weak year, as the table shows.
• Roles are competitive and ask for strong maths and programming. We have not measured how hard any route is, so this page does not say.
• Some of the work is the same as building a trading bot yourself, and that costs no entry fee. See how to build a trading bot and algorithmic trading.

What this page does not tell you

It does not say what any quant is paid, what you would be paid, or how to get hired. It does not say that learning to build bots leads to a quant job. It explains what the job is and why the pay is hard to summarise in one number.