20 top electronic trading firms and what they pay in London
Electronic trading firms like Jane Street have been hoovering up graduate talent globally. When you look at how much they pay, it's not hard to see why.
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We've looked at the UK entities of 20 top electronic trading firms, which are mandated to disclose 'salaries and wages' for their employees as well as headcount in their annual accounts via Companies House. Bear in mind the figures below include all staff at each firm; don't expect to earn the figures below in marketing or campus recruitment, but if you're in a revenue generating role you might feel entitled to even more.
You'll notice a pretty big disparity between the highest paying company, Quadrature Capital, and everyone else. That's not a typo. The London-based trading firm is very secretive - it's thought to have unlimited beer on tap that nobody drinks, and favours hiring diverse candidates. It also has strong links to the UK's Labour party.
It's worth noting that two of these trading firms also operate limited liability partnerships (LLPs) similar to hedge funds, which share out the entity's massive profits among a small cabal of employees. Jane Street paid £808k ($1.1m) to its UK staff on average, but LLP members were paid an average of £14m ($18.6m). XTX Markets' average pay for employees is unimpressive by electronic trading standards, but it paid 30 partners ~£19.9m ($26.5m) per head in 2024.
Working in electronic crypto trading can still be a lucrative option. Wintermute, one of the largest crypto native trading firms, paid more than the likes of Hudson River Trading and Jump Trading in its latest accounts. Jane Street has (rather controversially) continued to operate in crypto markets as well.
The figures above are predominantly for the full year ending 2024, but a lot has changed in that time. Jane Street, for example, reportedly paid $1.4m on average to its employees that year, but pay was on track to exceed $2m in 2025. The same is true at Citadel Securities, which paid marginally more than Jane Street to its average UK employee in 2024.
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