Trading Analyst At Tier 2 Shop Vs. Bond Trader At No Name

[vanillaice]

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[CrossGamma]

You pretty much ruled out Flow when saying “options”. Of the remaining two only Maven has a “trading analyst” role in Chicago. What is the typical development path for this position? Will you be able to become a trader after a few years? Maven is very new to the US market and not making any meaningful p&l there as far as I am aware. At the same time this could also present an opportunity. However, in Europe they struggle scaling their very fragmented market making setup and the US market is significantly more technology-driven. Finally, being in Chicago could make applying at others firms easier.

 

[vanillaice]

You pretty much ruled out Flow when saying “options”. Of the remaining two only Maven has a “trading analyst” role in Chicago. What is the typical development path for this position? Will you be able to become a trader after a few years? Maven is very new to the US market and not making any meaningful p&l there as far as I am aware. At the same time this could also present an opportunity. However, in Europe they struggle scaling their very fragmented market making setup and the US market is significantly more technology-driven. Finally, being in Chicago could make applying at others firms easier.

Maven's TA role seems to be newly created to help their traders do most of coding work and they prefer to hire experienced candidates, not sure if it will convert to trader after number of years(they have a different hiring pipeline for grad traders). Do you think becoming a TA is a step backwards in terms of career trajectory from being a quant at a bank (I was in a rotational quant program(FO+MO) at a big bank )?

 

[CrossGamma]

Maven's TA role seems to be newly created to help their traders do most of coding work and they prefer to hire experienced candidates, not sure if it will convert to trader after number of years(they have a different hiring pipeline for grad traders). Do you think becoming a TA is a step backwards in terms of career trajectory from being a quant at a bank (I was in a rotational quant program(FO+MO) at a big bank )?

Depends a bit on what you want. If you want to move into trading, then ask if there is a path to that after a few years. If you want to be a quant, then it seems like a bad move. You’ll be reporting to traders and not have any quant to mentor you on the desk. I.e. you’ll likely do some ad-hoc scripting and analysis work for the traders but won’t really grow as a quant.