Quant internships: what top firms pay, when they hire, and how interns get offers

At most trading firms, the summer internship is the main way into a full-time quant job, and intern pay has become a headline genre of its own. "$300k for an intern" is true in one narrow sense: several US firms now post an annualized base salary at that level for summer 2027. What an intern actually earns over a summer, when you have to apply, and how many interns get a full-time offer are separate questions, and the evidence for each is uneven.

Every claim below is labeled: official (a firm's job posting or careers page), reported (press), or self-reported (Levels.fyi entries and other candidate submissions), with the year.

Last reviewed 2026-10-04. Posted pay figures in the table come from summer 2027 job ads live on that date. Firms edit ads mid-cycle, so check the live posting before you rely on a number.

What the job ads say about pay

Many US firms now publish intern base pay; eFinancialCareers credits New York's salary transparency law, and Akuna's ads cite the Illinois Equal Pay Act. Most quote an annualized rate, even though the program lasts about ten weeks.

(All official: firm job postings, accessed 2026-10-04.)

Squarepoint's "Intern Quant Researcher" ad is a standing posting that predates the 2027 cycle: Greenhouse shows it first published in July 2023, still live on 2026-10-04. It states a minimum base of $150,000 in New York, based on information available when posted. (Official, posted 2023.)

How to read the annual figures. $300,000 a year is about $5,770 a week, which is why it lines up with HRT's $5,800 weekly figure. Over a ten-week program that comes to roughly $58,000 of base pay before tax (calculated from the posted rate; the firm does not publish this figure). In July 2025, eFinancialCareers reported that Jane Street had raised base pay for its top-paying internships from $250k to $300k, or $5.8k a week. (Reported, 2025.)

The Optiver exception. Optiver's Chicago ad calls its range "a good-faith estimate of the base pay scale and sign-on bonus" and does not say whether it is annualized. Self-reported Levels.fyi entries for Optiver Chicago in summer 2026 show $175 an hour (about $30,300 a month) plus a $10,000 sign-on bonus. That suggests the posted range is a whole-summer figure, with no annualization. (Official, 2026; self-reported, 2026.) Do not compare it line by line with the annualized figures above.

Sign-on bonuses, housing and the rest

Base pay is often only part of the package. HRT, Five Rings and DRW ads all mention housing; Optiver's mention flights, accommodation and commuting stipends; IMC's mention included accommodation. (Official, 2026.) The cash extras mostly come from candidate submissions and press:

• Self-reported, Levels.fyi, summer 2026, New York. Jane Street at $144.23 an hour ($25,000 a month) with a $25,000 sign-on bonus. HRT at $145 an hour with a $25,000 sign-on bonus, housing and meals. Citadel at $132.50 an hour ($22,967 a month) with a $20,000 signing bonus and corporate housing. One winter 2027 Jane Street entry lists a $40,000 sign-on bonus. Each is a single submission.
• D.E. Shaw (reported). eFinancialCareers reported 2025 sign-on bonuses of $20k for PhD quant interns and $15k for undergraduates, plus $10k for housing (January 2025). A July 2026 piece using Levels.fyi data put its PhD interns at $25k a month with a $25k sign-on bonus.
• Susquehanna (SIG, reported, September 2025). $6k a week for PhD machine learning and quant research interns in New York, $5.7k for master's-level quant interns and $5.5k for undergraduates.
• Total for the summer (reported, 2025). An intern at an unnamed Chicago HFT market maker told eFinancialCareers they had been offered $71k in total for a ten-week 2026 internship, including a $30k signing bonus.

The pattern: at the top end, US quant internships for summers 2026 and 2027 cluster around $5,500 to $6,000 a week in base pay, and sign-on bonuses of $10k to $25k (sometimes more) can add a large share on top.

When applications open

Recruiting for the summer between your penultimate and final year starts roughly eleven months ahead. Greenhouse, the job-board system many of these firms use, records when each ad was first published. For summer 2027 (official, Greenhouse job-board data, accessed 2026-10-04):

• 1 July 2026: IMC Chicago quant trader and quant research; Optiver Chicago quantitative intern and PhD research intern.
• 5 July: Tower New York and Chicago quant trader/researcher.
• 8 July: Jump Chicago and New York quant trader and researcher.
• 13 to 14 July: HRT algorithm development, DRW quant roles, Akuna quant research, Jump London and Amsterdam, then Five Rings on the 14th.
• Late July to September: most Europe and Asia ads. IMC Amsterdam on 31 July, Jump Singapore on 3 August, IMC Hong Kong on 12 August, Optiver Amsterdam on 17 August, Tower London on 1 September.

Some firms go earlier. A student-run tracker of quant internships (Northwestern FinTech's GitHub list) added a Susquehanna 2027 trading internship on 18 April 2026, and its note on Jane Street says the firm "opens roles in July." (Community-maintained, 2026.) The previous cycle looked similar. In January 2025, eFinancialCareers reported that Citadel and D.E. Shaw had been taking 2025 summer applications since August, and that Bridgewater had already closed its applications. (Reported, 2025.)

Eligibility windows matter as much as dates. IMC's Chicago trading ad wants graduation between September 2027 and July 2028, DRW's Chicago ad December 2027 to June 2028, and Tower London's ad is "only open to penultimate year students." Optiver's Chicago ad goes earlier: graduation between December 2027 and June 2029, "with sophomore standing or higher." (Official, 2026.)

Several firms also limit how you apply:

• Optiver applies a global 8-month cool-off: if you sat an online assessment or interviewed for a quant intern or graduate role at any Optiver office in the past 8 months, you cannot reapply yet. Its Amsterdam ad asks candidates to complete the online assessments within 7 days of being selected. (Official, 2026.)
• HRT does not allow multiple applications and considers you for all open roles from one. IMC allows one application per role per year and encourages applying to a single role. Five Rings strongly encourages applying only to your top choice. (Official, 2026.)

At several firms you effectively get one attempt per cycle, so the online assessment needs to be practiced before July.

How the programs are structured

The common shape is classroom training, simulated trading, a mentored project, and a social calendar. The firms' own descriptions (official, 2026 unless noted):

• Jane Street: 10 to 12 weeks between May and September, plus off-cycle internships, in New York, London and Hong Kong. Classes cover topics from performance-sensitive code to machine learning to poker, alongside mock trading and a mentored project. The New York trading ad lists electives in machine learning and data science, algorithmic trading and market microstructure, and trading strategy.
• Five Rings: 9 weeks, from the beginning of June to the beginning of August, with classroom teaching, in-house strategy games, mock trading, and mentoring by full-time traders.
• IMC: 10 weeks of classroom training on options theory and market principles, trading simulations, project work, and a dedicated mentor and intern lead. The Chicago ad requires a 7 June 2027 start.
• Jump: an "intensive 10-week program" with daily one-on-one mentorship, mock trading sessions and poker training.
• Optiver Amsterdam: ten weeks run by an education team of former traders and researchers, including trading live markets on Optiver's technology "with simulated capital" and a research project.
• DRW: project-based assignments advised by traders, ending with a presentation of results to senior leadership after 10 weeks.
• Citadel (reported, 2024): a 2023 London intern described an 11-week program that opened with a week of workshops, then a mentored project designing a trading strategy for the fixed income desk. She returned full-time that October.

The mock trading these programs describe uses the same skills as the interviews: pricing under uncertainty, sizing, quick arithmetic. Our market-making game is a low-stakes way to practice quoting before you do it in front of a mentor.

How interns are evaluated

No firm publishes a scoring rubric. What they do say is consistent: offers depend on performance during the summer itself, and passing the interview guarantees nothing.

• IMC: "interns who meet our performance expectations will have the opportunity to secure a full-time Graduate Trader position." (Official, 2026.)
• Optiver Chicago: a return internship or full-time offer "based on performance." Its interview process also decides whether you are offered a trading or a research internship. (Official, 2026.)
• DRW: the end-of-summer presentation to senior leadership. (Official, 2026.)

Levels.fyi's general internship guide says managers "typically rely on mentors to decide whether a return offer will be given." (Editorial; the guide covers tech internships broadly and does not focus on quant firms.) (Analysis; no firm has stated this.) The visible signals are project quality, your decisions in simulations, and how you use feedback.

Return offers: what the numbers show

Few firms publish conversion rates. Data points from quant-heavy firms (not limited to quant roles):

• IMC (reported). eFinancialCareers reported that IMC hired over 220 interns in 2025, up from 200, about 55 of them in the US. Of those, 29 were "allegedly brought back full-time on up to $425k pay packages." An August 2025 piece attributed the 29-of-55 figure to insiders and said quant interns were offered up to $425k with $250k salaries. IMC declined to comment. (Reported, 2025 and 2026.)
• Balyasny (reported, 2024). About 100 interns from 40,000 applicants, with half going on to full-time jobs.
• A bad year (reported, 2023). A trading-firm executive told eFinancialCareers that summer 2023 conversion was "dramatically lower" after weaker revenues and earlier overhiring at competitors.
• Broad baseline (self-reported). Levels.fyi says 56% of interns across its dataset receive full-time offers. That figure covers all industries.

So the two firm-level figures sit around half, but conversion moves with the firm's year. Missing out is common, and it is rarely final. Balyasny's head of quantitative research, Giuseppe Paleologo, told interns without return offers to apply widely, well beyond the most famous firms, and wrote that "some/all of the best people I have hired or inherited were not obvious superstars, but underdogs." (Reported, August 2025, quoting a post on X.)

Who gets in

Jane Street says its 2025 summer intern class came from over 103 colleges and universities and more than 24 countries. (Official.) In June 2025, eFinancialCareers studied 72 incoming Jane Street interns who had announced their internships publicly. They came from 37 universities; 47 of 70 studied computer science in some form and 24 studied mathematics. Only one was a PhD student, and 13 were master's students. (Reported, 2025; a self-selected sample.) Acceptance rates are tiny: eFinancialCareers reported in July 2026 that HRT accepts 0.1% of applicants for its New York office and that Citadel and Balyasny each accept under 1%. (Reported, 2026.)

For two common first rounds, see the Jane Street interview guide and the Optiver online assessment breakdown.

Sources, confidence, and corrections

Posted pay and dates come from live job ads (summer 2027 ads, plus Squarepoint's standing intern ad) and their Greenhouse records; Levels.fyi figures are individual self-reported submissions; press figures carry outlet and date. Our sourcing rules are at /methodology.

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