I work in prop trading and I've never seen that kind of guaranteed salary offered. Maybe as a one time signing bonus to poach someone from a competitor. Typical base salaries for traders/quants/engineers are in the low six figures.

I'm head of a small team running high frequency strategies. I control parameters/portfolio/risk, design/fit predictive models, code C++ for simulation and live trading, and spec out designs for our FPGA developers. I make around 200 base with average bonus in the high 6 figures, good years over a million. At firms with uncapped contractural payouts, bonuses can be far higher for very profitable traders.

But if you come into the industry expecting that, prepare for disappointment. The markets are super efficient so it's hard to make profits. A lot of good ideas are done to death already. You might be stuck on a bad team or not get the opportunity to advance. Making mid 6 figures all-in on a consistently profitable team at a profitable diversified firm is a very good outcome. Modal outcome is making low 6 figures for a couple years and being pushed out.

Also while some enlightened firms realize that infrastructure is a competitive edge and pay big bonuses to engineers, there are many where they're second-class citizens. Only take front-office roles at such firms, not just because of the money, but because you won't be respected. IMO they should be avoided entirely because they'll eventually fall behind and lose.

Thanks for the details. Your depiction is in line with what I've seen personally, but the million dollar base promises did filter in after I left; not for me, but to pass along to people like you, probably.

I'm in the industry. Out of curiosity, which firms do you think do a good job of not treating back-office engineers as second-class citizens?

Finally, some common sense and a realistic response.

Perusing the financial statements of publicly traded trading firms might be an interesting experience for anyone who's not familiar with the industry.

1. How many people work at your chosen company? How big is the entire tech heavy trading industry?

2. What is the average total compensation?

3. Which way have revenues been trending? Revenues per employee?

For anyone who's interested in comparing it to the glory days, look at the historical numbers in the GETCO/Knight S-4.

Complete nonsense. Plus note the intersection between FPGA dev and ML is likely to be practically zero and equally useless at quant firms unless you're in an AI firm building ML on chip. Far easier to go from FPGA to ML than the other way round.

You're right about the lack of intersection between ML and FPGAs. I should have used stronger language.