Buy Side Research vs. Junior Trader vs. Quant

Hi all,

Recent grad from a target EU school in quant/financial engineering, have been interviewing for a while.
My goal has been trading, and I've gotten very far into the processes at the top MM firms (Optiver, SIG, etc) as quant researcher/trader and also some HF's like (Millennium, Qube) , but failed at the last hurdle most of the time.

I am starting as a Junior Trader at a small crypto prop shop soon, where I'll mostly be doing execution and research on the side. Remote work, trading on DEX and CEX, with a large array of in house quant tools.

I also managed to get an Internship for the JPMC markets research team which will start a couple of months after the other role. Main responsibilities are monitoring markets, developing trade ideas, and conducting PF reviews. Successful interns are directly converted to the full time program.

I'm wondering if any of you have experience in any of these two roles and could give me some insights into career progression etc. I'm wondering if I should go through those processes again next year (really, it was painful) at the MM firms, because the pay there is really unmatched anywhere else in trading I believe.

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