This Wall Street Firm Pays Interns $34,400 a Month, With Free Housing Attached

Susquehanna International Group (SIG), a proprietary trading firm, is offering its 2027 summer interns $8,600 per week, or $34,400 per month, for quantitative trading and research roles in its New York and Philadelphia offices, according to a Fortune report cited by Entrepreneur. The full 10-week program totals $86,000 in cash compensation, before non-cash perks.

The rate puts intern pay at roughly seven times the median U.S. weekly wage. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the median worker earned about $1,235 per week in the first quarter of this year, meaning a typical employee would need close to two months to match what an SIG intern earns in a single week.

The economics of the offer

The headline number is only part of the package. SIG bundles free housing, two complimentary meals per day, and access to social events including poker tournaments, according to the Entrepreneur report. For interns based in New York and Philadelphia, subsidized housing removes one of the largest fixed costs of a summer placement, effectively raising the net value of the compensation above the stated $86,000.

The targeting is narrow. Job listings indicate SIG is recruiting PhD candidates set to graduate by summer 2026, along with postdocs in quantitative fields such as mathematics, physics, computer science, and economics. Undergraduate interns can earn up to $7,600 per week depending on the role, still a premium over most graduate-level salaries elsewhere.

Why a trading firm pays this much

For a proprietary trading firm, intern compensation is a talent-acquisition cost measured against the value of the people it converts to full-time hires. Quant traders and researchers at firms like SIG work directly on strategies that generate trading revenue, and the pool of candidates with the required mathematical and programming depth is small. Paying above-market rates at the internship stage functions as an early screen and a lock-in mechanism, securing candidates before competitors, including hedge funds and other proprietary shops, make their own offers.

The intensity of the work is the trade-off. Wall Street roles are associated with long hours and high pressure, and the perks SIG offers, from housing to meals, reduce the friction of that workload rather than change its nature. The roles are also difficult to secure; the positions are highly competitive and screen for a specific academic profile.

The Asia read

The pattern matters beyond New York and Philadelphia. Proprietary trading firms and quant funds have expanded aggressively across Asia-Pacific hubs including Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, and they compete for the same narrow pool of quantitative talent that SIG is bidding for. Compensation benchmarks set at U.S. offices tend to filter into regional recruiting, particularly for PhD-level candidates who can relocate. For technical graduates in the region weighing careers in AI research or software engineering, the trading sector's willingness to pay a premium at the internship stage is a competing signal on where quantitative skills command the highest early-career return.

What the figures do not show is conversion rate, retention, or how many interns receive full-time offers, the metrics that would indicate whether the spend produces a return. The compensation is documented; the payoff for SIG is not.