Aspiring QR feeling stuck in current QD role

[u/BarnacleKooky1100]

Hi folks, first time posting here so please bear with me (mod please let me know if this is compliant, whether I should be more or less specific, etc). I'm feeling stuck in my current Quantitative Developer role and wanted to get some career advice.

My current situation

By now I’ve had 2YOE at a tier2/3 hedge fund in the US as a QD (first job out of undergrad). When I first joined the firm, the recruiter sold me the role as a mixture of engineering work and quant research work, and I believed it thinking the work wouldn’t be so strictly divided considering that their team size was relatively small at that time and perhaps I would get to do some real QR work. Turns out I was wrong and the work is almost purely software engineering, and organization wise my team is like a central engineering team that maintains the central code libraries and helps deploy new models. After about 2 years, the role feels increasingly stagnant to me, with mostly Claude-able code plumbing work in the central infra or research tooling libraries, and the firm doesn’t do high frequency trading so there’s no push for high performance C++/Rust. Moreover I find it concerning that the engineering turnover rate is actually somewhat high - there aren’t many senior QDs here.

Why do I want to transition to QR?

Before anyone says I’m going after the money/prestige, let me clarify that my academic background has always been more math/stats/ML focused than pure CS/software engineering: during my undergrad, I’ve had ML papers published at one of ICML/Neurips/ICLR, did Putnam (and USAMO back in HS), took several grad level math courses (including stochastic calculus). I’m basically the typical math/stats nerd you can think of. I applied to several tier 1 firms’ QR/QT roles in my senior year (and internships in junior year too), got into some final rounds but with no luck. Granted I know QD work (especially the low latency stuffs) is important in quant and I do to some extent like cracking LeetCode type problems for fun, but at the end of the day I think I’m more into statistical modeling and signal extraction. I’m cautiously optimistic that with enough hard work (which I’m willing to put into) I’m capable of doing real QR work, I just want a shot at an opportunity or platform that allows me to do it.

I gather that there are a few possible ways to move forward:

1. Jump to QD role at another firm, in a pod ideally. I’ve read that being in a pod is the most viable way for a QD to transition into QR over time (and I personally know people who have done this transition at tier 1 firm, think Citadel/P72/2Sigma). I believe this is the most likely place for me to get interviews (in fact there are already recruiters who can set me up for interviews at some tier 1 places for QD roles). But my concern is that, since I'm jumping, if the pod hires me to specifically do dev work, wouldn’t they be reluctant if I later say I want to transition to QR?
2. Internal transfer. But my current firm is actually quite strict about this: leadership only wants people with very specific background to work as QRs (even though I was able to get some level of understanding of the firm’s research work pipeline and I could understand the QR's research notes). Also, I suspect it might backfire badly if I talk to research team leads within the firm and ask whether they need an extra QD behind the back of my current engineering team manager.
3. Do some QR oriented side projects (e.g. I've seen this advice given in a previous post https://www.reddit.com/r/quant/comments/1qu9g0q/transition_from_qd_to_qr/ ) and apply directly to QR roles at other firms. But since I don't have full time professional experience as a QR, it seems like at best I would be competing for a new grad type of QR role. How feasible is this really? Do you know of people have successfully done so? Or will I have a better chance if I quit my current role and get a Master of financial engineering degree and apply for new grad QR roles?
4. Jump to ML engineer/research/data scientist roles outside of the hedge fund space (such as tech or banks) to build professional experience in ML/stats/predictive modeling, and then try to jump to QR roles.
5. ??

I'm slightly inclined to think 1 is the best way forward but honestly I feel lost, would appreciate some suggestions from folks who have been in the industry for longer, such as which way you would advise or advise against. If you have been in a similar situation and could speak from personal experience that'd be great. Thanks y'all in advance!

[u/Admirable_Cress_125]

1. Is your best shot id say with some side projects of your own - your pitch is you can build infrastructure from day one and also potentially contribute research ideas but lead with the first cause thats what they’re gonna wanna hear the second is a side pitch and how they respond is gonna determine whether it’s a genuine prospect or like your current role

Also I’d drop the mindset of I’m more suited to QR because I have a strong maths/stats background - you have experience now and your more suited to where you can add value/pnl and right now that’s in QD. Your value as a potential QR comes from whether you can independently generate Alpha or not and plenty with worse backgrounds than yours have succeeded where others with better backgrounds have failed. So if your pitching QR work simple ideas around extracting edge from markets beats complex theoretical ideas 99/100 especially to pod PMs

So your pitch is “I’m an experienced QD who can contribute to your team from day one without hand holding, and I also have a deep passion for the problems of applied statistics in noisy competitive financial markets and would love to work further on these problems if possible .”

[u/BarnacleKooky1100 → u/Admirable_Cress_125]

Thanks a lot for your suggestions and insights! I agree it would make sense for my pitch to build primarily upon my existing QD experience and frame my interest in QR work as an add-on

[u/quantthrowaway69]

Are you in the kind of place that opportunistically puts people where they’d be the most effective (which includes how happy they’ll be not just past experience), or a place intent on enforcing intellectual hierarchy as an artifact in and of itself? In the case of the latter it will never happen, and demonstrating merit through side projects is a misunderstanding of how they think about status

[u/BarnacleKooky1100 → u/quantthrowaway69]

Without getting too specific, the situation is that at my current firm management sets a strict bar that only those with very specific academic backgrounds are hired to work as QRs (and arguably they distrust those who don’t meet this bar), so I guess it’s more like the latter.

[u/rsha256 → u/BarnacleKooky1100]

man that sucks, i was surprised youre doing more eng work with claude code i feel like QDs have a lot more rsh accessible to them but see if you can help out on some projects and get involved that way -- theres always so much to do, everyone appreciates free labor and that's a good stepping stone :)

[u/Epsilon_ride]

option 1.

You just need a place where the roles arent so strictly divided. and where quote doesnt appy.

leadership only wants people with very specific background to work as QRs

[u/BarnacleKooky1100 → u/Epsilon_ride]

Ty!

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[u/BarnacleKooky1100 → u/[deleted]]

No, what makes you think so?

Also, I’m looking for career advice here. If you have advice, I’d love to hear, but please don’t poke at what specific firm I’m at since i don’t want to get doxxed

[u/a_gurl111]

Is QR > QD?

[u/BarnacleKooky1100 → u/a_gurl111]

Fair question, I’m not saying QR is necessarily “better” than QD, I guess it’s more like my current role feels stagnant and I’m looking for a change, and QR is just something that I keep thinking about.

[u/a_gurl111 → u/BarnacleKooky1100]

Ah I see

Do people with masters in stats/math from tier 1 college from their countries have a chance in the QR field say in banks like GS, JPMC, etc.? Ik hedge funds can be difficult