Bank / Institutional

Bank and institutional prop trading desks are traditional employer-employee proprietary trading operations. The trader is an employee, the firm provides real capital and infrastructure, and compensation is typically a base salary plus performance bonus rather than a pure profit split.

The category includes standalone proprietary trading firms (Jane Street, Jump Trading, DRW, Optiver, IMC), market makers, and the diminished prop desks still operating inside some banks post-Volcker Rule. Strategies typically include market making, statistical arbitrage, options market making, high-frequency trading, and macro positioning.

Hiring is selective. Most positions require strong quantitative backgrounds, structured interview pipelines, and an extended evaluation period. Traders selected through this channel rarely move to retail evaluation prop firms; the structural differences in capital access, infrastructure, and compensation are large.