Jane Street vs HRT (2026): Interviews, Pay, Selectivity
9 min readApplr Team

Jane Street vs HRT (2026): Interviews, Pay, Selectivity

Jane Street and Hudson River Trading get compared as if they were the same firm at different sizes. They are not. HRT screens for someone who writes correct, fast systems code under time pressure; Jane Street screens for someone who prices things quickly and updates when the information changes — and it tests that with an 8-minute arithmetic exam before a human ever reads your CV. The comp question that usually drives the comparison is close to a coin flip: levels.fyi lists a $500K median software-engineer package at HRT and $420K at Jane Street (both retrieved 9 September 2026), which is well inside the year-to-year variance of a discretionary bonus.

What actually differs is the shape of the gate, the size of the firm, and where in the world the seats are.

The 30-second verdict

Jane StreetHudson River Trading
HeadquartersNew YorkNew York
Headcount (Revelio Labs, Mar 2026)~3,357~1,490
Growth since 2023+15.7% (from 2,902)+13.5% (from 1,313)
North America share of staff54.9%64.0%
Northern Europe / East Asia20.9% / 11.2%14.5% / 8.1%
Grad hires per year~100-200 globally (Quantt, 2026)~80-120 globally, from ~30,000 applications
First hard gate8-min mental-math test, ~70-80% to passOnline assessment, ~5-10% pass rate
OnsiteSuperday, 4-6 sessions5-6 interviews in one day, usually NY
Production languageOCaml (trained after joining)C++
SWE median TC (levels.fyi, 9 Sep 2026)$420K$500K
Grad Y1 range$400K-$650K (techinterview, 2026)$300K-$500K (Quantt, 2026)
Glassdoor interview difficulty3.55 / 53.45 / 5
Positive interview experience63.8%46.5%
Recent quarter$16.1B trading revenue, Q1 2026$11.4B trading revenue, Q2 2026

Two firms having absurd years, in different ways

Jane Street booked $16.1B of trading revenue in Q1 2026 with $10.3B of net income, both more than double the same quarter of 2025, against a full-year 2025 figure of $39.6B (Bloomberg, 8 May 2026). Bloomberg attributed the quarter to medium-frequency strategies — machine-driven positions held for days or weeks — plus rising marks on the firm's stakes in AI startups including Anthropic.

HRT's 2026 is proportionally even steeper. The firm did about $6.4B in Q1 and $11.4B in Q2 against roughly $12.3B for all of 2025, so its second quarter alone came close to matching a full prior year (Cryptobriefing, 19 August 2026).

The candidate-facing lesson is the same at both: a record quarter changes the bonus pool, not the number of seats. HRT added about 153 people in the year to March 2026, growth of 1.6%, while Jane Street added roughly 435 over the same window (Revelio Labs, March 2026). Jane Street is the one converting revenue into headcount, and it is already more than twice HRT's size.

The gates are in completely different places

HRT's filter is the online assessment. Quantt's 2026 guide describes two or three hard problems in 90 minutes with a pass rate around 5-10%, then a single 60-minute CoderPad screen with a working engineer, then five to six interviews in one day, usually in New York, with offers landing within about two weeks. Guides from tradermath and TechPrep break the onsite into competitive-programming rounds, a low-level systems round covering lock-free data structures, CPU cache behaviour and kernel-bypass networking, CS fundamentals, and behavioural. The recurring note across those guides is that HRT's "easy" problems are fundamental algorithms that have to be implemented perfectly, with every edge case handled, under time pressure. Team matching happens after the offer, so you are choosing the firm before you know the desk.

Jane Street's filter is arithmetic, and it comes first. techinterview's 2026 guide describes a 60-question, 8-minute mental-math test at the recruiter stage with a pass threshold around 70-80% correct, and is blunt about the consequence: failing it ends the process regardless of credentials, with no later round to make it up. Its calibration is Zetamac — 60+ questions in two minutes correlates with passing, below 40 generally does not — and it notes that candidates with maths PhDs but no practice routinely fail. After that comes a 60-minute probability and brainteaser phone round, then a superday of four to six sessions: one or two harder probability rounds on random walks and stopping times, a coding round in any language judged on clarity rather than algorithmic heroics, a market-making game where you quote a bid and offer and update as information arrives, and a behavioural conversation. Quantt puts the whole process at four to six weeks and acceptance rates for trading roles well below 1%.

That difference is worth taking literally when you plan. Four weeks of daily Zetamac drilling is a higher-return investment for a Jane Street application than another fifty LeetCode problems; the reverse is true for HRT.

The Glassdoor numbers hint at how the two loops feel. Retrieved in September 2026, Jane Street sits at 3.55/5 difficulty with 63.8% of candidates rating the experience positive, HRT at 3.45/5 with 46.5% positive — and HRT's software-engineer applicants specifically at 32% positive. HRT's process is rated slightly easier and liked considerably less.

Money, and what the median hides

levels.fyi's ladders, retrieved 9 September 2026, put HRT at $446K for L1, $495K for L2 and $723K for L3, with the L2 package splitting roughly $243K base and $247K bonus. Jane Street's page shows $387K at L1, $343K at L2, $483K at L3 and $378K at L4, on bases in the $248K-$272K range — a flatter, noisier curve, which is what you would expect from a smaller sample of a firm whose variable comp is fully discretionary.

The published guides invert the ranking. techinterview puts a Jane Street new grad at $400K-$650K in year one — roughly $175K-$225K base, $100K-$200K signing, $100K-$300K performance bonus — while Quantt puts HRT graduates at $300K-$500K. Both cannot be right, and the honest reading is that neither dataset is large enough to settle a comparison this close.

Community accounts land in the same place. In a Blind thread from August 2024, an HRT employee argued that HRT algo dev pays more than Jane Street SWE at every quantile, while others in the thread pushed back that the two roles are different jobs rather than two prices for one job. In an older thread from October 2020, a new grad holding both offers at $300K-$400K reported that a Jane Street employee told them total comp would end up very similar and that the variance would exceed the marginal difference; that poster chose HRT for C++ depth, the smaller firm and role flexibility. Nobody in either thread claimed one firm was clearly richer.

Where the seats are — and why that decides it for many readers

This is the cleanest split in the whole comparison. Revelio Labs' March 2026 breakdown puts Jane Street at 54.9% North America (about 1,825 people), 20.9% Northern Europe (695) and 11.2% East Asia (374), with a further 5.9% in South Asia. HRT concentrates 64.0% in North America (945), with 14.5% in Northern Europe (215) and 8.1% in East Asia (120).

Jane Street is also visibly building outside the US. It occupies more than 110,000 square feet across six floors in Hong Kong (Cryptobriefing, 5 September 2026), having moved up from 2.5 floors; eFinancialCareers reported in November 2025 that the office held about 400 people at the time with room to reach 1,200, and that its Hong Kong trading hires usually convert from internships, with 2025 graduates coming from schools including Oxford, NUS and HKUST.

If you are on an F-1 and would rather not stake your first three years on the H-1B lottery, that distribution is the argument. A London, Hong Kong or Singapore start is a plausible ask at Jane Street and a narrower one at HRT — and the internship-conversion pattern in Hong Kong means the application that matters is the one you file for the summer, not the one you file after graduating.

Which should you choose?

  • You are a fast, accurate mental calculator who likes pricing under uncertainty — Jane Street trading. The mental-math gate is the whole ballgame; start drilling before you apply.
  • You write low-level C++ and enjoy systems performance work — HRT. The loop rewards exactly that, and the skill transfers to every other prop shop if you leave.
  • You want to work outside the US, or want a non-lottery visa path — Jane Street, on the geography above.
  • You want the language you learn to be portable — HRT's C++ travels further than OCaml, which was the reason the 2020 Blind poster gave for their choice.
  • You are a strong generalist with no view — apply to both. The gates are so different that the two applications barely compete for prep time.

One thing neither firm rewards is a resume tuned for big tech. Both loops decide on the OA or the phone screen, so the CV's only job is to survive a scan; run it through Applr's free ATS resume checker before you file, and spend the saved hours on drills.

Prepare for both

Sources

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is Jane Street or HRT harder to get into?
They are hard in different places. HRT's gate is its online assessment, which Quantt's 2026 guide puts at a 5-10% pass rate on two or three hard problems in 90 minutes. Jane Street's gate arrives earlier and is stranger: a 60-question, 8-minute mental-arithmetic test with a pass bar around 70-80% correct, per techinterview's 2026 guide, which ends the process for many strong candidates before anyone reads their CV.
Which pays more, Jane Street or HRT?
On self-reported data HRT is ahead for engineers. levels.fyi lists a $500K median software-engineer package at HRT against $420K at Jane Street, both retrieved 9 September 2026. Guide-level ranges disagree with that: techinterview puts Jane Street new grads at $400K-$650K in year one while Quantt puts HRT graduates at $300K-$500K. Treat the gap as noise and pick on role and fit.
Do I need to know OCaml to get hired at Jane Street?
No. techinterview's 2026 guide states that new hires are trained on OCaml after joining and that the coding round can be done in any language. Familiarity signals interest but is not a gating factor, and the trading loop is not a coding loop at all.
Which firm is better for an international student?
Jane Street, on seat distribution. Revelio Labs put 54.9% of Jane Street's 3,357 staff in North America in March 2026, with 20.9% in Northern Europe and 11.2% in East Asia, against HRT's 64.0% North America share of about 1,490 people. Jane Street also occupies more than 110,000 square feet across six floors in Hong Kong (Cryptobriefing, September 2026), so a non-US start is a real path rather than a lottery ticket.
How long does each process take?
Quantt's 2026 guides put Jane Street at four to six weeks from application to offer and HRT at offers within about two weeks of the onsite. HRT compresses five to six interviews into a single day, usually in New York; Jane Street spreads four to six sessions across a superday after two phone rounds.
Is the offer for a specific team?
At HRT, no. Quantt describes team matching as a conversation that happens after the offer, so you are accepting the firm first and the desk second. Jane Street runs a manager or fit round inside the loop, which gives you slightly more visibility into where you would sit before you decide.

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