22 year-old Jane Street interns said to earn $64k in 11 weeks

How much do you earn as an intern at Jane Street, the electronic trading firm with a justifiable reputation for extravagant pay? 

The firm isn't commenting, but reliable sources say that Jane Street's circa 400 global interns this summer are earning around $64k each for the 11-week period, or $23k a month. This is thought to include signing bonuses and housing payments. 

Jane Street and Citadel Securities compete hard for staff and are known to be the most generous payers in financial services.  Citadel interns are earning $20k a month in salary this year.

Getting a job at neither firm is easy: Citadel only accepts 0.5% of applicants; Jane Street has a long history of mostly hiring people who were top in their classes in quantitative subjects at elite universities and have won mathematics Olympiads. People in these categories will often have job offers from both firms.

Quantitative traders and researchers earn the most; quant developers earn the least. Within three years, the best quantitative traders at Jane Street might take home eight figures. Quant developers at the firm allegedly have to wait....five years to earn that kind of money.

Levels.fyi says there are software engineers with seven years' experience earning $800k at Jane Street. However, it also says there are systems engineers there with 24 years' experience earning $850k. 

What are Jane Street interns doing to earn their dollars this summer? It's too early to say. Last year, though, they were writing open source tools, creating data fetcher programs for live data and improving testing tools.   

Jane Street is already advertising its internships for 2024 and is offering next year's quant trader interns...$250k prorated in salary alone. 

While electronic trading firms like Jane Street and Citadel Securities are the most generous in the market, their ability to continue increasingly compensation exponentially may be hampered by revenues. After 2022's revenues were fueled by surging volatility, first half net trading revenues at Citadel Securities fell 35% in 2023. 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)