A recent (and somewhat misrepresented) job posting for an AI product manager at Netflix, with a total compensation package of up to $900,000, goes viral, showing just how much top AI talent can earn these days. Will you be able to compete with the growing demand for AI talent in the financial industry?Based on the salaries of junior employees, it’s certainly possible if you find the right job.
hedge funds pay the most
AI has the potential to become an important part of hedge funds’ quantitative trading processes, and this is evident in hedge fund adoption. This is also reflected in their salaries.
Junta Nakai, a former Goldman Sachs salesman who went on to become global head of financial services for a high-tech infrastructure company, said he has seen hedge funds “pay $320,000 to $430,000 for top AI talent coming out of college.” According to Nakai, AI professionals are catching up with investment professionals in terms of pay. Technology has “moved from a cost center to a source of competitive advantage,” he added.
Most major hedge funds are hiring people in the AI field. For example, Citadel is looking for experience in machine learning, time series analysis, pattern recognition, or NLP.
In addition to the AI quant role, Steve Cohen’s hedge fund Point72 has multiple roles dedicated to strengthening research in this area, including interns and graduate machine learning researchers. The firm is also recruiting for a private equity associate specializing in “deep tech.”
banking industry
Banks with more employees than hedge funds should offer more AI roles, right? Not necessarily. Depending on how you measure it, some banks employ very few AI experts. The chart below shows the number of job listings where banks have more AI-related terms in their role names.
JPMorgan has made its commitment to AI clear and has the most work on its books (though it has yet to hire investment advice chatbot IndexGPT). Goldman’s desire for NLP staff is evident in its current job advertisements. Citi’s numbers are a bit underwhelming given its plans to hire thousands of technical staff this year, but the jobs it has, such as engineering and head of research for a generative AI project in London, are interesting.
Once classified as AI-tagged jobs, banks can offer more AI jobs. JPMorgan has 132 jobs with this tag, compared to 23 at Goldman and 10 at Morgan Stanley. However, many of the lists place AI experience as a “nice to have” rather than a must-have.
Bank AI jobs pay less than hedge fund AI jobs. Senior associate graduate student with master’s or doctoral degree hired for AI research at JP Morgan can The annual salary is $195,000, but the lower end of the salary range is only $133,000. However, there are still opportunities for high income. Goldman advertised an opening for a VP of NLP Engineering for a “new, scalable and resilient generative AI platform” with up to $250,000 to be earned.
AI jobs in fintech
Fintech is also a field where machine learning is highly valued, and it’s no wonder that payment giant Stripe is one of the top adopters. We currently have 9 unique Machine Learning Engineer listings, with the highest-paid Staff Engineer/Technical Leader earning a whopping $484,600. base pay.
But Stripe isn’t alone. eFinancialCareers has 65 machine learning jobs in fintech, with companies like Monzo, Plaid, and Ramp all hiring. But don’t expect them all to pay as much as Stripe.
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