The 20-year-old finance interns earning $30k a month are quants and engineers

If you're applying for an internship in finance, your end-goal will be a high-paying full time job. But you don't necessarily have to wait until you graduate to start earning big money. For quants and engineers especially, hedge funds and trading firms are willing to pay top dollar to bring you in as an intern... but who pays the most?

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Using salary data from Levels.fyi, we've ranked the top paying internships for quant and engineering roles across those two sectors of finance for this year's, and last year's summer cohort. Datapoints are verified by Levels if candidates upload their offer letter; if a datapoint is not verified, you'll see an asterisk next to the firm's name.

It's worth noting that these figures aren't reflective of the entire intern environment of each firm, and you won't be guaranteed these figures should you get a job at any of them. This is merely a snapshot of what you can earn.

How much do interns earn in hedge funds?

There are a select few hedge funds where you can earn more than $20k per month as a quant intern, and the pack is even smaller for undergraduates. Citadel and Balyasny both pay ~$23k per month; the Citadel intern also reported a sign-on bonus of $25k and, while one was not reported for Balyasny, the hedge fund is thought to offer similar sized sign-on bonuses. Both funds accept less than 1% of applicants for their global internship programs.

Quant fund D.E. Shaw has the highest paying internship overall, offering $25k per month, but it's only on offer to PhDs. It also provides the most comprehensive breakdown of benefits; in addition to a $25k sign-on bonus, interns get a $10k housing benefit, a $3.3k stipend for self-study and a seperate $4k stipend for technology.

The highest verified pay figures come from Californian quant fund Voleon Group. A PhD quant researcher there will earn $22k per month, in addition to a $20k sign-on bonus.

Levels.fyi only covers the largest hedge fund intern programmes, but there are some smaller funds offering even more lucrative internship opportunities. New York hedge fund Spark Investment Management., for example, pays interns $45k for just two weeks of work!

How much do interns earn in electronic trading?

Jane Street has a reputation for being the niche firm paying students crazy salaries, but there's always a niche-er fish. The highest paid interns in financial services (and the world, according to Levels) are at Radix Trading. The Chicago based firm pays its PhD interns a staggering $35k per month. It's not clear whether this comes with a sign-on bonus, but the firm has offered up to $25k in previous years.

The only other firm offering $30k+ per week is Amsterdam-based firm Optiver, which pays that sum to interns in both Chicago and Austin, Texas. It also comes with a $10k sign-on bonus. 

Trading firms tend to prefer undergraduates, but there are PhD-centric intern opportuntiies too. At Hudson River Trading (HRT), a PhD intern can earn $25k per month (and a $25k sign-on bonus) while working out of the firm's Singapore office. The firm accepts just 0.1% of applicants for its New York office. Jane Street interns in New York receive the same package at undergraduate level.

At HRT, the true benefits may come if you can translate the experience into a full-time offer; Levels.fyi says the firm's entry-level engineers are the highest paid in the world, earning $400k in total compensation.

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