Mid-level base
£90,000 to £130,000
Recruiter survey, all quant roles
Senior base
Above £160,000
Up to £200,000 at elite firms
Quant researcher, 1 to 3 years
EstimateAbout £195,000 to £440,000
Base plus bonus, before tax
Intern pay, HRT
£4,350 a week
Plus housing and meals
Many of the firms on these pages run their European business from London. Jane Street calls its London office the centre of its European business, G-Research works from its London offices, XTX Markets has an office there, and Citadel Securities, HRT, Jump and Two Sigma all employ staff in the city.
Unlike in New York, London job ads rarely state pay. Recruiters put the base for a mid-level quant at £90,000 to £130,000, and the accounts UK companies and partnerships file show what each firm pays its staff on average, bonuses included. Put together, they show a market that pays a little less than New York in base and makes up much of the gap in the bonus.
How much do quants earn in London?
Recruiters put base pay for mid-level quant analysts, developers and researchers in London at £90,000 to £130,000. Senior quants earn above £160,000, and elite hedge funds and trading firms offer up to £200,000 in base pay.
Those are base figures, and at a trading firm the base is the smaller part of the story. It rises slowly with seniority; what grows is the bonus, which the chart below adds on top.
What does total pay look like in London?
With the bonus, our estimate for a quant researcher in London with 1 to 3 years of experience is £195,000 to £440,000 a year before tax. The chart below shows every stage; move the slider to set the base.
At a £110k base, quant researchers in London make an estimated £160k to £310k in the first year and £360k to £1.1m after 7 years. The base barely moves with the years; the bonus does the growing, and in a strong year at the best-paying firms it takes total pay to about 10 times the base.
Typical range of base in recruiter guides and job ads for the city: £90k to £130k.
- Researcher, Year 1: base about £110k, estimated total pay £160k to £310k.
- Researcher, 1 to 3 years: base about £110k, estimated total pay £195k to £440k.
- Researcher, 4 to 6 years: base about £110k, estimated total pay £280k to £660k.
- Researcher, 7 years or more: base about £110k, estimated total pay £360k to £1.1m.
Senior pay goes well past this chart. Jane Street paid an average of US$2.68 million per employee in 2025, and the highest-paid director of Two Sigma’s London company received £5.41 million.
A year, before tax, not counting a sign-on bonus. The low end of each column is an ordinary year at an ordinary firm; the top is a strong year at the best-paying firms.
How this estimate is worked out
The base is the one on the slider, within the range recruiter guides and firms’ job ads give for the city. Too few traders and researchers in the city report their pay, so Tradermath sets the bonus from what the market pays at each stage. The bonus stays the same share when you move the slider, so a higher base brings a larger bonus.
What do London trading firms pay per employee?
Dividing each firm’s filed staff costs by its average headcount gives an average for every role and level, including support staff. It is not a salary anyone is offered: it folds bonuses and senior pay into one number, and it moves with each firm’s year. What it does show is how firms compare.
Wages and salaries per employee at UK entities, from filed accounts
| Firm and entity | Year | Average staff | Per employee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citadel Securities Europe Services Ltd (UK, Zurich, Paris) | 2025 | 277 | $730,000 |
| G-Research: Braunford LLP (non-administrative staff, 8 months) | 2024 to 2025 | 49 | £2.17 million |
| Hudson River Trading Europe Ltd | 2025 | 21 | £1.47 million |
| Jane Street UK Partnership LLP | 2025 | 790 | $1.88 million |
| Jump Trading International Ltd (group) | 2024 | 288 | $690,000 |
| Millennium Capital Management Ltd (group) | 2024 | 1,123 | £720,000 |
| Two Sigma International Ltd | 2025 | 85 | £500,000 |
| XTX Markets Technologies Ltd | 2025 | 127 | £460,000 |
Firms are listed by name, not ranked. Each figure is in the currency of the firm’s accounts: Citadel Securities, Jane Street and Jump report in US dollars, the others in pounds. Millennium’s group figure includes 552 administration staff, which pulls its average down.
How much do London quant interns earn?
Few firms publish London intern pay. Hudson River Trading pays £4,350 a week in London, both in its 2027 algorithm development internship and in its data science internship, plus company-paid housing and meals.
What happens to pay when you leave a London firm?
Trading firms in London often keep a leaver away from the market for a notice period, known as garden leave. During it the firm pays the base salary but not the bonus, so the timing of a move matters as much as the offer: a move just before bonus season can cost most of a year’s pay.
A new employer sometimes buys out a bonus the candidate gives up by leaving. That is a negotiation, not a rule, and no firm on these pages publishes how it handles it.
How is pay taxed in the UK?
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, income up to the £12,570 Personal Allowance is tax-free. Income from £12,571 to £50,270 is taxed at 20%, up to £125,140 at 40%, and above that at 45%.
The Personal Allowance falls by £1 for every £2 of income above £100,000 and is zero from £125,140. Income in that band is taxed at an effective rate of 60%.
Employees also pay National Insurance on their earnings: 8% from £12,570 to £50,270, and 2% above that. The take-home comparison works out pay after both, city by city.