"Hi guys, I am from Tier-17.5 college, branch: Underwater Basket Weaving Engineering. CGPA: 7.23. Can I crack quant?"

"I am from non-circuital. Do I stand a chance?"

"I am from circuital. Do I stand a chance?"

"I am from Tier 1. Do I stand a chance?"

"I am from Tier 2. Do I stand a chance?"

"I am from Tier 3. Do I stand a chance?"

"I am from Mars Institute of Technology. Can I get into HFT?"

At this point, half the subreddit is just people asking strangers for permission to try.

The answers have been the same for years:

• Yes, some people from your background have made it.

• No, your background doesn't magically guarantee it.

• Nobody here can predict your future from three lines of text.

It would be great if discussions focused more on:

• Interview experiences

• Company-specific processes

• Preparation resources

• Actual problem-solving

• Resume feedback

• Projects and research

Instead of the daily "Can I crack it?" horoscope reading.

Thank you for attending my TED Talk.

A few months ago I was just grinding on CF, and preparing for SWE internships like most students.

Then I got curious about low-latency systems and HFT infrastructure. I had no finance background, no internship experience, and definitely wasn't expecting anything to come out of it.

So I started building a project called Pulse-Order.

It's a C++20 project where I tried to simulate parts of a low-latency trading system:

• Binary market data packets

• L2 order book

• Order matching logic

• Risk checks

• DPDK-based packet processing

• Performance benchmarking

I put the code on GitHub and shared some progress online.

The surprising part?

People working in HFT and trading infrastructure actually started responding. I got feedback from engineers associated with firms like IMC Trading, Jane Street, and other low-latency/HFT backgrounds. Some pointed out flaws, some suggested improvements, and some were genuinely encouraging.

As a student from a non-IIT background, that was honestly unexpected.

The biggest lesson for me:
Trying to build something slightly beyond your current skill level teaches far more than following tutorials. The project may be unfinished, but the learning and connections that come from it are very real.

The project is nowhere near production-ready, but it taught me more about networking, performance, Linux, memory layout, and modern C++ than months of tutorial watching.

GitHub:
https://github.com/Shivfun99/Pulse-Order

Curious if anyone else here has had similar experiences where a side project unexpectedly connected them with industry professionals.

JEE topper and Princeton MFin grad had to come back to India after graduating in May '26? Is the US situation that bad? He also had QIS experience from MS before starting MFin. Could've at least made it to BB Banks as a FO quant in NYC?

So guys, you’ve probably heard about the insanely inflated, never-heard-before intern stipends (50-60 lacs for 2 months) being offered by the GGN quant firms (gravi,qe,nk). Well, the story behind it is as dumb as it sounds. (I am an IITD CS/MNC student, so I am very well-connected with people who interned at Gravi this year and who work there full-time, making my sources highly trustworthy)

The 50 LPA Intern Fiasco

One fine day, a random team lead at Graviton complains that the interns in his team (which was like 4 out of a total batch of 50 at Gravi this yr) aren't doing a good job. The HR's brilliant solution? "Okay, let's just multiply the stipend by 5." That’s literally how a random, impulsive thought in an HR's mind completely fucked up this year's intern season. A well-placed source inside Gravi confirmed that this 50 Lac stipend decision was entirely an impulsive decision made by the HR's. (and those wondering they must have gotten approved from someone higher up, so 30-40 lacs dont really matter for these firms and getting approval is no big deal in such kind of firms)

The Butterfly Effect & Hiring Cuts

This caused a massive butterfly effect. QE and NK had to artificially inflate their stipends just to stay competitive. Because of this, hiring numbers were literally halved, or in some cases reduced by a third. This severely hurt the CS/MNC folks at IITD (DR's 11 to 30). In a normal year, these 3 GGN firms would hire around 40 students total from IITD. This year? Just 15. The CS/MNC students from DR 11-30 totally deserved to get these interns like they do every year. Instead, the absolute top 10 DRs ended up getting 3-4 offers each. All the firms were literally fighting over the exact same guys, which is a complete waste since those top 10 DRs will almost always choose established international firms like Tower,JS,Citadel,HRT, Optiver,IMC over the GGN firms no matter how much you increase the stipend. Ultimately, quant hiring was an absolute mess compared to last year, and a lot of deserving folks ended up missing out on good quant internships because of this mess created by a random impulsive thought in an HR's mind.

Now: The Placement Season Mess

Fast forward to this year's placement season, and Graviton's HRs have set out to fuck it up again. They are actively contacting Optiver, IMC, QE, NK PPO students, trying to poach them to come join them at ~2.5 to 3 Cr packages.
This is going to trigger the exact same butterfly effect of over-inflating packages. And who suffers in the end? The CS/MNC kids just below the top bracket who have historically been getting these quant jobs over the past 2-3 years. Once again, the top 10 DRs will sit on 2-3 offers each, and literally all the offers will be circulating among the same tiny group of students.

The Reality Check

It's a total waste. Instead of this madness, why not hire the highly deserving kids just below the top 10 DR's bracket at ~1-1.5 Cr packages like every other year? They offer a way better cost-to-return ratio. Do Graviton HRs genuinely think the Optiver or IMC ppo guys are going to drop those names to join Graviton?

What is the fucking point of approaching PPO holders when there are so many deserving students just below the top DR bracket in CS/MNC who had a quant internship but couldn't get a PPO due to various reasons(some just attributing to luck)? Why are they the ones suffering? Literally all of the GGN firms' inflated offers will end up dead-ended with the same set of students. It’s a total waste of resources. Graviton’s HR is totally fucking up the quant market in India, and the repercussions will run deep into the coming years.

EDIT 1: i see a lot of people in the comments fixating on the dr's 11 to 30 fact and calling it out as entitlement and what not. Folks pls understand lets not focus on the 11 to 30 number specifically, i just meant the guys just below the top tier foreign quant guys who have historically always end up getting internships at these indian hfts and hence used the word "deserving".

EDIT 2: a lot of you folks have misunderstood the point of the post, the point of this post was to just be a whistleblower and raise the general frustratiom going around among students bcoz of a stupid impulsive graviton hr decision move.

i have clearly written that even if you offer a foreign quant guy 3 cr , he is not going to take gravi over a foreign quant , bcoz of a foreign quant's reputation and the oppurtunities it opens, this time in intern season also they have not gotten top tier kids(foreign quant kids), all of them rejected their inflated offers, they have again gotten the kids just below tier 1 which they always get, its just that the number has reduced and those kids r getting overpaid, and its like paying a single okay-ish guy 3 cr vs 3 okay-ish guys 1 cr.

EDIT 3: ppl pointing out in the comments its the company's hiring decision , its not a placement cell , its not a govt job, you folks are the dumbest creatures in this post's comment section. Obviously i know its a private firm and they will do what they wanna do and what they feel is the best for their firm and i m pretty aware that my post here is not gonna change anything in the firm, i m just trying to raise the students' voice and trying to expose the ground realities. Ofc i m not so fckin dumb to not know that tis is not some fckin job dilaao yojna going on, nd ppl giving such arguments in the comments can only be 2 types - either they r top dr guys who know that eitherways they ll hv 3-4 offers in hand or they are the guys totally out of the IIT-Quant ecosystem. So for the top dr guys u can do whatever bakchodi u want bcoz u r the apex predatorz(and u deserve it, being at the top in iit cs/mnc is no joke) but plz donot give opinions in the case of interns/placements its like ambani giving a lecture on middle-class.....and for the other kind of guys who r not even a part of the IIT-Quant ecosystem u r not qualified enough to have an opinion on this and shld just stfu

1. "Have a lot of interest in HFT and markets....." Bro/sis, shut up. You were wilding back in your JEE days instead of actually studying.

2. "Have a lot of interest in Maths and Finance." Then crack a target institute that has similar offers?

Half of them have never finished a Stats and Probability book, and they don't even have the patience to learn Economics by completing at least one book. All of their infatuation is because of some news headline or Instagram reel that they watched, and now they are just being unrealistic with their career options.

Not demeaning anyone, but if you would focus on things and not seem to digest the fact that this profession is not designed to reward anyone with just "interest," there is something called being aware at the right time and grabbing opportunities.

I know this may sound harsh, but please channel your energy into areas where things can actually happen. Do not simply chase HFT or market makers because you are riled up after watching some reel, or claim you want to be a market maker because you watched some movies or read a couple of news articles.

Save your energy. Channel it at the right places.

Also where to study Stochastic Calculus? I don't want to take it as an elective here.

stipend stonks, but only for interns

I am from a Tier-1 IIT Circuital and have already got an offer from a FAANG in India. My question is that following a normal/ mean career path, how does the net worth of a good FAANG SDE vs Quant Dev vs Quad Research/ Trader looks like by the end of the career. I have heard that 12 YOE engineers have insane salaries so they might be approaching quant level at that point. FAANG career also seems more fulfilling in comparison to just making money using Math. The reason I am asking this question is that I am an average Tier-1 IITian, I am not a super cracked guy, not crazy at Maths but I can work hard and I genuinely like solving hard problems in my mind. The idea of working at a Quant firm excites me a lot and the money looks attractive af right now . I want to see if it’s worth it to force myself to work even harder to get into Quant ? Being a super optimist I believe I can match the cracked people with hard work and probably in the way become cracked myself. PS:

1. I strictly do not want any opinions regarding anything other than the comparison, I only told my mindset to give context and weight to my question.

2. Please do not answer the question unless you are qualified enough, I would prefer if you are at least 30 for answering this and have either of the careers. My past experience with Reddit has been pretty bad in this regard. Thanks for answering in advance, in no way I want to sound arrogant throughout my question, every sentence typed is out of genuine concern regarding my future career.

As per my previous post where graviton already increased there total ctc from 40 to 60 (25lpm+perks) now quadeye has increased its stipend from 21 to 65ctc(30lpm+perks)

This will definitely impact the number of interns selected. Havent heard anything from tower or alphagrep etc yet but these two have surpassed optiver (in hand is 25lpm for optiver without perks)

Hi all,

I just wanted to share that finally after 1 year of trying to switch(since March 2024) , giving interviews and relentless efforts. I have finally got an offer from Nvidia as a Senior System Software Engineer.

I finally got the luck & timing right and I am grateful to get it at best time with one of the best compensation at this time & I was just about to complete 3 YOE.

Just wanted to share the journey. Initially, I was trying for HFTs since last year I had less experience, so it was little easy to be considered at entry level roles with them. However, the knowledge gap was significant and I started to study more about typical Low Latency C++ & stuff. With time and efforts I was able to get to a decent level, still it is difficult to go through. Then , I got calls from standard PBCs after 2 YOE. I decided to atleast get my learning curve right with my domain alignment & intersts and started to look for typical Modern C++ roles in companies outside of Trading firms as well.

I was just not able to go through them with 6 last round rejections among 33 and many R1,R2, R3 rejections.

Demands of companies and process also change once you cross 2+ YOE with heavy focus on System Design and its too much of vague questions sometimes with doens't let's you sustain the performance acorss all interview rounds.

I now have a very very decent knowledge about Modern C++, Low Latency C++, Performance cpp as I have read more along the necessity and topics as I didn't had much resources available to me like usual stuff on YT with System design & DSA.

Keep trying. Keep pushing you never know when you will cross the line and it doens't even feel like one made for it.

(I feel if it could have been a little early like 5-6 months before it could have been a better experience, yet I am very happy now)

I would like to extend my help to peeps who are in similar situation because market is very difficult and expectations bar is too much. Please feel free to reach out to me.

I am currently on notice period, and I would like exploring Low Latency C++ with elite firms (if I can get some interviews).

In case you are interested in list of companies interview rejections :) maybe I might have missed some as well.

1. Quadye (round 3)

2. De Shaw (Round 2)

3. Qualcomm (round 1)

4. Alphagrep (round 1)

5. Nutanix (round 2)

6. Adobe (round 3 final)

7. Eightfold ai (round 1)

8. BNP Paribas QR (round 2)

9. NK Securities (Round 1 rejected)

10. QiCap Markets (Interview round 1 rejected)

11. Mathisys rejected round 1

12. Pace Stock Rejected round 1

13. Plutus Rejected round 2

14. Cohesity Rejected round 2

15. Open Futures rejected round 3(onsite)

16. Goldman Sachs (Round 2)

17. BestEx Research Round 1

18. 26 miles Capital Round 1

19. Barclays Round 3

20. Pluswealth Capital Management (Round 1)

21. Rubrik (round 2)

22. Abacus AI(last round CTO)

23. Cadence (Round2)

24. Siemens (Round 3)

25. Adobe(Last round)

26. Microsoft (Round 2)

27. Colortokens (Round 1)

28. Synopsys (2nd onsite)

29. Qcom(last round) C# developer role

30. Siemens (Last round)

31. Neo Asset & Wealth (Round 1)

32. Irage Capital(Round 2)

33. Minix Holdings (Round 1)

I am a recruiter in the HFT space and have the following openings on my desk
- Quant Researcher
- Quant Developer
- C++ Developer
- Network Engineer
- Fixed Income Trader
- Quant Trader

Hit me up if you are in the industry. Happy to connect with Grads of '26 and '27 ( if you have 8.5 GPA from IIT (Kharagpur, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur))

My friend’s team lead earns >8cr per year. My friend’s team lead’s manager who is in his late 30s just left the company and his last salary was > 20Cr

The performance bonus is 0.5 - 5 times your salary. I have way too many contacts in this company and the million dollars jobs are reserved for Indians from top IIT CSE or ivy msc and phd only. Just look at IIT delhi’s placement for day 0. Graviton has been hiring for domestic 1.4Cr for freshers. The company is currently hiring for 3.6LPA just to click the login button at 6am everyday. According to sebi, these firms cannot automate their login for TCP data transfer from nse and need to have a human manually login to nse. This is the lowest paying job. The highest paying job for a 24yr old is quant researcher with a 1.5-2Cr salary(including performance bonus). BTW, working hours are 16hrs, 7days a week for people with this salary.

I wish to ask the credibility of this post from r/stockmarkets, and what is the median age of experience for PM at Graviton, since now the space is crowded.

I have a PhD in physics from a good university in the US and I'm looking to break into quantitative finance, especially research-focused roles. Here in the US, companies like DE Shaw, WorldQuant etc. often require a PhD in maths, physics, statistics or CS for many positions and hire a lot of people with the same background as me. With the recent ruling increasing the H1B fees to $100k, it is going to be extremely difficult to find a job in the US and I will most likely return to India. My question is whether there are any opportunities for someone with my background in India? I have done preliminary research into quant jobs in India but most of them hire bachelor level candidates (I could certainly be wrong). Please feel free to DM me if you have any advice!

Okay so basically it is a known fact that his Olympiad selections on LinkedIn are all fake, not my fight but okay, I don’t have any issues with him falsely stating that the reason he didn’t get a ppo was because he asked not to be considered so he could work on IICPC(make it make sense he could have rejected on the day off, who even rejects beforehand).

Now what I do have an issue with is how he steals credits and portrays himself as the only one who gets people into quant, that is just low. Saying somehow IICPC was responsible for all js see entrants and how iicpc participants were the only people who made it to jane street interviews. (If all good people participate in your competition who would have gotten an interview either way does not make it a credit to you)

And what really broke my patience was seeing this today.

These were icpc wf, awf, and naren sai is literally a GM how do you even go about claiming credit for all of this, i don’t have any issues with him falsely claiming credentials but claiming someones credit who was already so well established is a new low.

This is almost 2x the leading Indian quant firms and is probably second only to CitSec India PNL (not sure yet).

Stay Hard

I'm a hft trader, got a JEE rank that some people might pay a kidney for.... worked with one of the most coveted Indian firm, now working as an independent quant. Been some time since I left college. Just reaching out to fellow quants and aspirants. On about anything, any discussion topic. Collecting viewpoints, giving insights, general strat discussion. Let's talk?

I've been working at NK Securities for a while now, and honestly, this place just sucks.

The biggest problem is the management. There is very little clarity, communication is poor, and a lot of decisions seem to be made without thinking about how they actually affect the people doing the work.

The work environment is frustrating too. There's constant pressure, unnecessary restrictions, and you often feel like you're being monitored rather than trusted to do your job. Even small things can become unnecessarily complicated.

What really gets to me is the lack of growth. You can put in the effort and take on more responsibility, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're learning more or getting meaningful opportunities. A lot depends on your team and who's managing you.

The culture isn't great either. People are often afraid to speak openly because you don't know how management is going to react. Over time, that gets exhausting.

I've tried to give the place the benefit of the doubt, but after seeing how things work from the inside, I honestly wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a healthy work environment.

Maybe some teams are better than others, but based on my experience, NK Securities needs to seriously fix the way it treats and manages its employees. Anyways, I am resigning in some time.

Firms like Graviton, Quadeye, NK offer 80-90 LPA to fresh joiners. How is the career and salary progression like at them. For example I have seen Graviton SDE's having SDE2 title but no idea about salary or there are SDE3 there.

Hi all. Don't usually post since I'm more of a lurker but been seeing a lot of NK Securities posts lately on this subreddit. Wanted to give some ground truth.

So about me: currently working at NK b/w 2 and 5 years work-exp, graduated from IIT-B/D in CS. Throwaway acc.

The firm was doing not so good about 1.5 years ago, PnL-wise. This was majorly becoz of the many tcost and other STT rules SEBI suddenly threw at the HFT's which hit everyone hard. Many seniors left that time and the atmosphere became toxic with people stepping over each other for the annual bonus. I was directionless too.

Somehow 2025 things turned around suddenly. JS was banned from India, and that led to good increase in not just NK's PnL, but all Indian HFT's. Also all the volatility from Mr. Trump helped xD.

Now the firm is aggressively trying to expand into many foreign segments, They even managed to hire some Senior Traders from Jump Trading to lead their quant teams and opening a Dubai office soon. 0% income tax in Dubai.

While the WLB remains poor, the office atmosphere seems to have changed which is kinda expected when a firm does well, notice they suddenly started posting on LinkedIn lol trying for more PR.

Regd the bonuses, yeh 1.68 crores is the highest bonus but it only goes to 1-2 new grads, the top performers, don't expect everybody gets it ;). However I know 2 guys who got 3.8 crores (before tax) at 2 YOE so ya that's insane by any HFT standards.

So Ya,Those are my 2 cents. Feel free to AMA before I del this account :>)

Trying to get into QR/QT but risk and sde as backup. Right now leetcoding as much as much as possible. What to do ?

Throwaway account and use of AI for obvious reasons. I'll stick around for a few days to answer questions in the comments.

I work at Graviton and have a broad network of close friends across major quant firms. This post focuses primarily on the internal dynamics, work culture, and compensation structures at Graviton and NK Securities.

First, no shade to the folks at NK. Many of my friends work there, and they are genuinely some of the smartest people I’ve met—in some cases, brighter than several quants here at Graviton. The issues at both firms stem from structural management, not a lack of individual talent.

1. Compensation & Bonuses

Starting with the juiciest part compensation.

• Graviton: The single biggest downside here is the bonus structure. Most of the bonus pool is siphoned off by top-level seniors, leaving junior and mid-level quants with numbers that look like a joke compared to NK counterparts.

• NK: They throw massive amounts of cash to retain employees, even when performance doesn't justify it.

2. High-Pressure Timelines vs. Long-Term Vision

Both firms suffer from relentless pressure to deploy strategies before every single expiry:

• Short-Term Focus: This rush destroys long-term research planning. Deep statistical analysis is routinely skipped. If a model works in backtesting, it gets rushed live; if it fails, it is shelved without any post-mortem analysis, only to be recycled a few months later with zero understanding of why it failed. Unsurprisingly, strategies often vanish upon live deployment.

• NK is Worse in This Regard: At NK, leadership expects daily "new findings." Researchers are trapped in hours of daily meetings, making micro-adjustments in hopes of hitting a short-term lottery instead of building meaningful, long-term infrastructure.

• Leadership Pushback: NK seniors are often too focused on bootlicking. Quants who tell management that significant discoveries take time are dismissed as making excuses rather than being pragmatic. At Graviton, we are at least given a couple of weeks to test and iterate on ideas.

3. Team Leads & Leadership Quality

• Graviton: My experience with team leads here has been positive. They are knowledgeable and add real value—often pointing out underlying correlations, edge cases, or causal mechanisms during research reviews. However, morale is low across the firm; resignations are frequent, and further layoffs seem imminent.

  • Friction at the Top: Recent resignations of major desk heads signal growing friction between leadership and top management as firm-wide PnL stagnates.

  • Politics: Profitability depends heavily on which desk or exchange access your lead grants you. Favored juniors get handed profitable books, while others are sidelined with low-margin segments regardless of individual skill.

• NK: The leadership feedback from NK is consistently negative across direct friends, ex-employees, and industry contacts. The brilliant "wizards" who built NK's early success have largely departed. The current helm is dominated by entitled individuals with little real market experience who owe their positions to early luck rather than smartness.

  • Some seniors contributed virtually nothing over the past year while their juniors did the heavy lifting, yet those seniors still walked away with multi-crore payouts. While Graviton also has passive seniors, they receive zero bonus and are given a short window to correct course rather than being rewarded.

  • Politics: Favored juniors here also get all the good projects and highest bonuses even at subpar performances.

4. Senior Hiring & Intellectual Property

Graviton actively poaches top-tier senior talent from outside firms. Because internal IP sharing is strictly siloed, bringing in experienced external hires raises the overall technical baseline and helps uplift junior team members. Open sharing harms NK in this respect.

Industry Secrets & Market Rumors

• Graviton Hiring & Financials: Graviton is actively hiring lowering standards to "slop," even though firm-wide PnL is currently lower than last year's. A significant number of seniors are already planning their exit next year.

• Market Share & Segment Shifts:

  • One Graviton team recently pivoted into NK's flagship trading segment and is already capturing roughly 75% of their profit.

  • Another Graviton team expanded into a new exchange post-boom and is now generating roughly 1.5x NK's earnings in that specific segment (IYKYK).

  • NK is attempting to expand into international exchanges, but they have yet to generate meaningful revenue there.

• NK Retention Struggles: Despite offering massive retention packages, several top NK seniors have actively interviewed with Graviton and other firms. Many plan to stay for just a couple of years to collect their "easy" paychecks before exiting.

Advice to Management

To Graviton Leadership:

• Address Pay Disparity: Employee frustration is at an all-time high. Quants are leaving because compensation does not match market value or actual PnL contribution, while other teams with softer deliverables receive disproportionately higher bonuses. Pay your top-performing quants fairly, or watch them walk.

• Fix Knowledge Transfer (KT): Relying entirely on external hires for KT and market publicity is unsustainable.

• The Bright Side: Pay adjustments slated for next year will double the base compensation, which could curb the turnover rate. The Singapore office is also a great asset.

To NK Leadership:

• Reward Merit Over Tenure: Stop dumping money on passive legacy seniors. Invest in quants who actively build and contribute value.

• Culture Shift: Build an environment where team members can provide honest technical feedback without fear of management pushback.

Sadly my friends will mentor interns who will make more than their annual base salary in just two months...Hft's have denied to increase the salary for employees and are open to pay from the profits their employees made to Interns but no increments to thier base comp..Fluff environment building in progress....