Quant Industry

Overview of the quant industry

The major U.S. quant firms are generally based in New York and Chicago.

https://github.com/quantprep/quantinternships2022 (table adapted from)

Company	Location	Notes	Member Connection
Akuna	Boston, Chicago	Founded by ex-optiver traders. Meritocratic culture where people are promoted quickly. On the flip-side, stress levels and pressure tend to be on the higher side.	Rohit Chakravarty - Quant Dev Summer 2022
Allston Trading	Chicago
Ansatz Capital	NYC	Similarly to Aquatic, Headlands and Radix, a small but prestigious firm that is willing to pay more than most competitors. Fairly young firm. Uses Python and C++ for QR.
Aquatic	Chicago
AQR	Greenwich	Cliff Asness's firm.
Arrowstreet Capital	Boston
Belvedere	Chicago
Bridgewater	Westport	Day Ralio's firm. Very unique culture.
Citadel	Chicago, NYC	The hedge fund side of Ken Griffin's Citadel. The quants are mostly on the Global Quantitative Strategies team (GQS). Citadel tends to be fairly school-selective.
Citadel Securities	Chicago, NYC	The market making arm of Citadel. The general perception is that the culture tends to be better at Citadel Securities vs Citadel LLC. A good way to get into the interview pipeline is through Citadel's Data Open competition.	James Doredla - Systematic Trading Intern Summer 2021
Cubist	New York City	The quant arm of Steve Cohen's Point72 hedge fund.
DE Shaw		Where Jeff Bezos worked before founding Amazon. Tends to be extremely school-selective, mostly recruiting from ivy leagues and similar.
DRW	Chicago	Perception is that DRWers tend to have a good WLB but teams are usually siloed. One of the first traditional firms that started going into crypto.
Engineers Gate	NYC
Five Rings	NYC	Founded by an ex-Jane-Street guy. Very school-selective, mostly recruiting out of MIT.
Flow Traders	Amsterdam	Primary focus is on ETFs. Pay tends be lower than IMC and Optiver but the office is NYC instead of Chicago.
G-Research	London	Also hires people out of the US. Very focused on research with a lot of people working on cutting-edge Machine Learning. A caveat about their culture can be found in this article.
GSA Capital	NYC
Headlands Tech	Chicago	Founded by ex-Citadel people. Max Dama works here. Similarly to Ansatz, Aquatic, Headlands and Radix, a small firm that is willing to pay more than most competitors. Known to have a large focus on C++, both among QRs and SWEs.
HRT	Chicago, NYC	The Algo Dev role at HRT is essentially Quantitative Research. HRT's culture seems to be pretty similar to JS and pay is similar too. HRT has a bigger focus on ML with their dedicated HRT AI Labs. HRT, JS and Two Sigma are also known to recruit QRs out of undergrad.
IMC	Chicago	Word is that IMC has the chillest culture out of the three big dutch firms (IMC, Optiver, Flow Traders). Pay tends to be in between Flow Traders and Optiver. Tends to be more focused on the quantiative side than Optiver and Flow. Has one of the highest intern salaries.	Luke Cerone - SWE Intern Summer 2022
Jane Street	NYC	Founded by ex-SIG people. Tends to be more school-agnostic than other firms. Also offers a lot of first-round interviews. General perception of JS is that it has a very comfortable and quirky culture. Specializes in market making.
Jump	Chicago	Fairly school-selective recruiting. Very engineering-focused with siloed teams.
Mako Trading	London
Marshall Wace	NYC
Maven Securities	London	Founded by ex-optiver traders.
Millenium	NYC
Old Mission Capital	Chicago, NYC	OMC used to have an internship but rumor is that they paused the internship program due to the return rate of interns. They do have new grad roles.
Optiver	Chicago	Tends to have the highest pay out of the three big dutch firms (IMC, Optiver, Flow Traders) due their marble bonus system. Larger focus on traders. Traders generally tend to earn considerably more than SWEs at the Dutch firms, especially over time. QR roles are open for graduate students
PDT	NYC	Founded by Pete Muller, very collaborative and secretive culture similar to Rentech. Recruits college students for mainly SWE but some SWE/QR combo roles (dependent on team). Exclusively recruits PhD students for full-time QR roles.
Peak6	Chicago	The internships are geared towards women. The new grad roles are open to everyone.
QuantLab	Houston
Radix	Chicago	Founded by ex-Citadel people. Radix calls SWEs Quantitative Technologists. They don't publicize internships but they do select a handful of interns every year. Just email your resume. Rumor is that they offer the highest internship salaries. Culture is likely most similar to Renaissance.
Renaissance	Setauket- East Setauket	The legendary OG quant fund (medallion). Good luck with this one. You can email your resume and they do sometimes interview normal SWEs but it's very unlikely you'll get an interview for any other role unless you're extra-extraordinary.
SIG	Bala Cynwyd	Has a huge poker culture. Fairly chill culture but pay tends to be on the lower side.	Nihar Joshi - SWE Intern Summer 2021
Squarepoint	NYC
TGS	Irvine	Used to only recruit grad students but recently started recruiting undergrads as well.
Tower Research	NYC	Pretty traditional portfolio manager culture.
TransMarketGroup	Chicago
Two Sigma	NYC	Founded by ex-DE-Shaw people. Collaborative and chill culture. The org is mostly composed of QRs and SWEs. More of a quant hedge fund, with a a smaller market making arm and a venture capital team.
Valkyrie Trading	Chicago
Vatic Labs	NYC	Founded by ex-Jump people.
Virtu	NYC, Austin
Voleon	Berkeley	Specializes in Machine Learning and recruits college students for SWE roles but primarily recruits PhD students for research roles.
Wolverine	Chicago
WorldQuant	NYC
XTX Market	London	Branched out of GSA capital.