In a move that has sent shockwaves through the financial and technology sectors, London-based quantitative trading firm XTX Markets is publicly advertising a summer internship with a jaw-dropping pro-rata salary of £60,000. This figure is more than double the average full-time salary for UK graduates and significantly higher than the standard compensation for a brief summer role.
The position, focused on artificial intelligence, is a clear declaration of the intense war for elite tech talent raging within the City of London. Founded by billionaire mathematician Alex Gerko, XTX Markets is a major player in electronic trading, competing with traditional banking giants and hedge funds for the brightest minds in data science, machine learning, and software engineering.
The Salary Breakdown
The advertised £60,000 is a pro-rata amount, meaning the intern would receive a proportionate sum for the 10-12 week duration of a typical summer internship. This still translates to an astonishing weekly pay packet that dwarfs offerings from even the most prestigious investment banks.
This aggressive compensation strategy is not merely about generosity; it's a critical business investment. For a firm like XTX, whose success is built on complex algorithms and AI-driven models, securing a single intern who could develop a groundbreaking idea is worth the premium.
A Signal to the Market
XTX Markets' move is widely seen as a power play. By publicly listing this salary, the company achieves two key objectives:
- Attracting Top-Tier Candidates: It immediately grabs the attention of the most sought-after students from top global universities, cutting through the noise of generic graduate scheme advertisements.
- Setting a New Benchmark: It pressures other financial institutions and tech firms to elevate their own offers to remain competitive, potentially reshaping compensation expectations across the industry.
The role requires candidates to be in the "early years" of their PhD or to have completed a PhD in a relevant field like statistics, mathematics, physics, or computer science, underscoring the highly specialised nature of the work.
The Bigger Picture: The AI Talent War
This internship offer is a microcosm of the broader scramble for artificial intelligence expertise. Companies across finance, tech, and beyond are vying for a limited pool of individuals capable of driving innovation in AI. For firms in the competitive world of quantitative trading, where milliseconds and sophisticated models can mean billions, winning this talent war is existential.
XTX Markets, by putting an eye-watering number on the table, has just raised the stakes for everyone.
