An internship opportunity means a chance for students to get hands-on experience in the industry. But for some engineering students in India, it can now be worth Rs 30 lakh a month, reported Bloomberg.
High-frequency trading (HFT) firms are offering record high payouts to attract young talent with a very specific combination of skills: advanced mathematics, programming and the ability to use both to find opportunities in financial markets.
Gurugram-based Quadeye is offering interns Rs 30 lakh a month, or Rs 60 lakh for a two-month stint, according to the report.
Graviton Research Capital is offering about Rs 50 lakh for two months, while global firms such as IMC Trading and Optiver are offering packages of around Rs 50–60 lakh.
The numbers may look unusual for an internship. But the skill these firms are competing for is also unusual.
These firms are not simply looking for students who understand stocks or can read financial statements.
They are looking for quantitative talent, who can use mathematics, statistics and computer programming to build models that make trading decisions.
Typically, a quant researcher may work with huge amounts of market data and look for patterns in it to test whether those patterns can generate returns. They then turn the strategy into a system that can trade automatically for the companies.
In high-frequency trading, firms use computers and algorithms to identify and act on market opportunities extremely quickly. A small advantage in how fast a system processes information or executes an order can matter when a firm is making a very large number of trades.
Graviton has described its focus on people with strong problem-solving and data-driven skills, while saying that ideas, execution and results matter more than tenure or titles under the candidate’s name.
In simple terms, these firms are paying for the ability to turn mathematics and code into a trading edge.
India’s derivatives market has been facing tighter regulation and lower trading activity. The average daily turnover in equity futures and options fell 27.1% in July to Rs 1.7 trillion, its lowest level since November 2023, reported news agency Reuters.
Sebi’s latest study has shown that almost all the profits made by proprietary and foreign investors came from algorithmic trading.
Hence, despite the trading opportunities becoming harder, the competition for people who can find those opportunities is becoming stronger.
That is because a good quant can potentially help a firm adapt to a changing market, build new strategies and find opportunities that are too small or too fast for conventional trading methods.
The competition is no longer limited to Indian trading firms.
Global HFT companies have begun recruiting directly from India’s top engineering colleges. As per the report, IMC and Optiver have sharply increased their internship packages, while recruiters say global firms are becoming more aggressive about hiring straight from campuses.
Indian firms are also expanding beyond domestic equity derivatives into other asset classes and overseas markets.
This is changing what the most valuable financial skill for coming generations looks like.
It is no longer enough to know what to buy or sell. The bigger advantage can lie in knowing how to use data, mathematics and technology to find the trade before someone else does.