This is the quarterly Grainstone Lee report analysing firms that employ quantitative investment strategies. The report contains an in-depth analysis of the hiring and competitive landscape within key geographical regions, however, it does not seek to draw any conclusions about the health of the hiring landscape, or the impact of Covid-19.
Each quarterly report contains thousands of sourced data points across the largest financial job functions from Quantitative Investment & Trading to common roles such as Business Development and Compliance.
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Open roles at the beginning and end of Q4
The most in demand job functions
Open roles at the beginning and end of Q4
The total number of open roles at the beginning of October was 1,157 compared to 1,227 open roles at the end of December. The bar below shows a breakdown of open roles in each job function at the start and end of Q4.
Jobs added versus removed
The below chart gives a breakdown of the number of jobs added vs the number of jobs removed per job function in October to December 2020.
There is an 11% increase in jobs added versus removed. This is the same number as in Q3, however, there has been 164 less jobs added in Q4 than in Q3.
The only three divisions that have more jobs removed compared to jobs added are: ‘Data’, ‘Execution’ and ‘Support Functions’ (Compliance, Operations, Finance, HR, Admin).
The most noticeable feature this quarter is in ‘Execution’ where only 10 jobs have been added and 15 removed resulting in a 50% decrease. Compared to the previous quarter, ‘Execution’ had a 0% change in jobs added versus removed.
‘Risk & Pricing’ has seen an increase by 50% with 22 added and only 11 removed. In the previous quarter, there was only an 11% increase here.
‘Discretionary Investment & Trading’ has only seen a 7% increase in jobs added. Compared to previous quarter this number was 58%.
Last, ‘Business Development’ has seen a 35% increase and so has
‘Quant Development’. Compared to the previous quarter, ‘Quant Development’ had a decrease in jobs added by 25%.
Top 10 hiring firms
The top 10 most active firms by number of job postings are:
The most in demand job functions
The most active hiring is taking place across ‘Software Engineering’, ‘Infrastructure’ and ‘Support Functions’ (Compliance, Operations, Finance, HR, Admin). We’ve also included ‘Quant Investment & Trading’ in the table below, even though it’s only the fifth most active job function out of the 11 included in our analysis.
The table below shows the top five firms by jobs posted in these job functions.
Where are firms hiring?
The pie chart below shows where most jobs have been posted in Q4.
The table below shows a breakdown of job functions by region.
The location where most firms are hiring is, needless to say, the US.
Except from ‘Execution’ and ‘Quant Development’ all job functions here are significantly in-demand.
Other than in the US, Europe and Asia are also a particular hot spot for ‘Software Engineers’.
‘Infrastructure’ is also in demand in Asia and so is ‘Production Support’.
‘Support Functions’ (Compliance, Operations, Finance, HR, Admin) and ‘Quant Investment & Trading’ are both also in demand in Europe.
Notes for the report
The figures were captured from the career sites of the below firms between 1st October – 31st December 2020.
It’s worth noting that not every firm posts all of their open roles on their career sites so the actual activity and/or number of live roles may be different. This report only seeks to analyse the publicly available information.
We will also caveat that just because a role was removed does not necessarily mean that it has been filled although it’s reasonable to assume that if somebody has taken the time to upload or remove a role there is a reason behind it.
Firms analysed