Compensation/bonus progression at mid tier trading firms for experienced traders

I was wondering if anyone had any data/insight onto what pay at "mid tier" (non top tier) trading firms like IMC, DRW, and SIG might look like 3-5 years in. Their new grad offers start at 300-350k now (with 250-300 of that recurring) but I don't have any data on what experienced pay might look like. I realize that at that level performance matters the most but I don't know if performance is the difference between making 400k and 600k, or if it's the difference between 400k and 1.2 million.

Thanks!

15 Comments
 

There's actually a lot of MM firms similar in business model to the ones you mentioned, but are smaller. Like, more than 30. I would consider SIG and DRW and IMC S tier and places like Jane St and Five Rings S+ tier. Source: I am an intern at one of these firms mentioned.

 

I don't have experience with those exact firms and trading comp is pretty opaque and variable but industry wide performance and comp is fairly dependent on market conditions/volatility. Pnl is way up in the past two years at most trading firms and comp has gone the same direction. Not every firm/desk is doing that well and some firm's may be stingier with comp as pnl increased (e.g. Virtu) but there are also many firms expanding aggressively and giving out very generous offers to experienced hires (similar reasons as why fresh grad pay is skyrocketing). Flow Traders is probably an extreme example but 66 employees got 1+ million euros in 2020 while none got that much in 2019. Overall considering uncertainty in personal and firm/desk performance at some mid tier firms I wouldn't be surprised if the potential range in 5 years could be like 200k to more than 1 million.

 

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