The "superstars" of quant trading aren't on H1B visas, they're on O-1as

It's not often that a hedge fund or trading firm will go through a visa process to bring a non-American quant trader to the US, but headhunters say that exceptions are occasionally made. They don't involve the H1B, but a far rarer pass:  the O-1a visa. 

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The O-1a is a visa reserved for people of "extraordinary ability" according to its USCIS standard for classification. One London-based global quant headhunter says O-1a visas are reserved for "superstar talent" and are "very rare:" he's only seen them once or twice. A founder of a major quant recruitment firm tells us that his firm had never encountered one. Unlike H1B's, O-1a has an unlimited number of uses, but the process of obtaining them is very different.

How to get an O-1a Visa

It's not easy. The USCIS website says that to be eligible for an 0-1a, a person must have won a "major internationally recognized award", using a Nobel Prize as an example. If you don't have a Nobel Prize, it says you must satisfy three of eight criteria visible here. You can do so by authoring scholarly articles in major publications, being a member of a doctoral dissertation committee or by being credited for patents or licenses.

We spoke to Gopal VK, a recipient of an 0-1a visa who says he's helped others go through the process. He tells us that "many times, the petition is over 100 pages," and that his own was between 200 and 300 pages. You won't only need to prove extraordinary ability, but influence on the industry, a difficult feat in quant trading where influential developments are often proprietary and secret.

VK says letters of recommendation are the "key" to a successful O-1a application. These will often need to be under the letterhead of the company they represent and describe the applicant's contributions in detail, down to the "nuances". He also says that, while the minimum number of criteria you need to fulfil is three, "it's ideally good to have four or five."

Some of those criteria, however, might also stop firms from applying. One requires that a candidate has "commanded a high salary or will command a high salary or other remuneration for services as evidenced by contracts or other reliable evidence." This could deter firms that like to keep compensation secret.

So how do firms successfully obtain these visas for their quants? The headhunter says, "it’s easier to do for those that have incredible academic achievements, won multiple Olympiads, or sold companies in the past." 

The headhunter says the company will also usually "get someone to release an article about said individual." 

Information on O-1a recipients isn't publicly available. One person who received the visa while working in finance was Daniel George, who received it while working in JPMorgan's applied AI team, and previously went viral for spending very little of the $600k that he received within 16 months of working there. Another alleged recipient was Felix Bauckholt, the ex-Radix Trading and Tower Research quant who died in a shootout on the Canadian border earlier this year. Bauckholt was a gold medalist in the IOI statistics Olympiad.

If you can't get an O-1a, there's also the L-1 Visa, which requires employees to work in a non-US office for a year, then move to the US. A Paris-based headhunter tells us that "internal mobility is much easier to do."  

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