How to Become a Prop Trader: Qualifications, Salary, and the Firms That Hire

Becoming a prop trader at an institutional firm means passing a quantitative hiring process, usually with a mathematics, physics, computer science or engineering background. Firms like Jane Street, Optiver, IMC and SIG recruit mainly through graduate programmes and internships, test probability and mental math rather than market knowledge, and pay a salary plus performance bonus.

There are two completely different things people mean by "becoming a prop trader," and conflating them wastes a lot of time.

The first is getting hired by a proprietary trading firm. You join as an employee, trade the firm's capital on a desk, receive a salary and a bonus, and carry no personal financial risk. This is a competitive graduate-recruitment path that looks more like landing a role at a quant fund than like anything in retail trading.

The second is trading a funded account with a prop firm trading company. You pay for an evaluation, prove you can trade to rules, and receive a share of the profit you generate. No salary, no employer, no interview, and no degree requirement.

This guide covers the first route in detail: what the job involves, what firms screen for, what the process looks like, and what the compensation actually is. It closes with an honest comparison against the second route, because for most people reading this, that is the realistic option.

How Do You Become a Prop Trader?

You become a prop trader by applying to a firm's graduate programme or internship, passing a series of quantitative aptitude tests, and completing a final round of trading games and interviews. Most hires come straight from university with a quantitative degree. Firms recruit small cohorts annually and acceptance rates are typically well under 1%.

The standard path runs in five stages:

1. Apply to a graduate programme or internship, usually 9 to 12 months before the start date. Applications open early and close fast.
2. Pass an online aptitude test. Mental arithmetic under time pressure, probability, sequences, and pattern recognition. This is the biggest single filter.
3. Phone or video interview, covering probability problems, expected-value reasoning, and how you think through incomplete information.
4. Final round, often called a superday. Trading simulations, market-making games, more probability, and cultural fit.
5. Offer. Typically for a class starting the following summer.

Two things surprise people about this process. It tests almost no market knowledge, because firms expect to teach that. And it is heavily weighted toward speed of reasoning under uncertainty, which is why competitive mathematics backgrounds, poker players and puzzle solvers are overrepresented on trading floors.

The other honest observation: the overwhelming majority of hiring happens at graduate level. Lateral entry from an unrelated career is rare and usually requires a genuinely exceptional quantitative record.

What Does a Prop Trader Actually Do?

A prop trader at an institutional firm trades the firm's own capital for the firm's own profit, rather than executing orders for clients. Most modern roles are market making, quoting continuous two-sided prices and earning the spread, or systematic and arbitrage strategies. Discretionary chart-based trading is now a small minority of institutional prop activity.

The day-to-day is less dramatic than the popular image and more technical.

Market making is the dominant activity at firms like Optiver, IMC and Flow Traders. You quote a price to buy and a price to sell, continuously, across hundreds of instruments. You earn the spread and manage the inventory risk that accumulates. Success comes from pricing accurately and hedging fast, not from predicting direction.

Systematic and quantitative trading involves building, testing and monitoring models that trade automatically. This overlaps heavily with software engineering, and at several firms the trader and developer roles have effectively merged.

Arbitrage and relative value captures pricing discrepancies between related instruments, venues or maturities. Speed and infrastructure matter more than opinion.

What almost none of these roles involve is sitting alone drawing trendlines and taking directional bets. That style exists, but it lives largely in the retail funded-account world rather than on institutional desks. Our explainer on what proprietary trading is covers the institutional side in more depth.

What Qualifications Do Prop Firms Look For?

Institutional prop firms overwhelmingly hire quantitative graduates: mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, statistics and economics. Programming ability, usually Python or C++, is increasingly expected. Finance degrees are not required and are often less useful than a hard quantitative background. No trading licence is needed before you are hired.

What genuinely moves the needle in an application:

• A quantitative degree, ideally from a university the firm already recruits at. Target-school bias is real in this industry.
• Demonstrated mathematical ability under pressure. Olympiad results, competitive mathematics, strong performance in probability-heavy coursework.
• Programming. Python is close to a baseline expectation now, and C++ matters at the latency-sensitive firms.
• Evidence of decision-making with incomplete information. Poker, competitive gaming, forecasting and betting markets all get mentioned in interviews for a reason.
• Internship experience, which is the single most reliable route into a full-time offer.

What matters less than people expect: finance degrees, CFA progress, prior retail trading experience, and market opinions. A candidate who says they have been trading their own account for three years is not advantaged, and if they describe a discretionary chart-reading approach it can actively count against them.

Licensing comes after hiring rather than before. In the US, firms typically sponsor the SIE and Series 57 once you have an offer. You do not need them to apply.

What Is a Prop Trader Salary?

A prop trader salary at an institutional firm is a base salary plus a discretionary performance bonus, with the bonus becoming the larger component once you are profitable. Reported graduate packages at top firms commonly run well into six figures once bonus and signing bonus are included, with senior traders earning substantially more. Figures vary widely by firm, city and year.

The structure matters more than any single number:

• Base salary is fixed and paid regardless of performance. At top-tier firms it is competitive with software engineering at large technology companies.
• Signing bonus is common for graduate hires.
• Performance bonus is discretionary and tied to your desk's profitability and your contribution to it. This is where the upside sits, and it can dwarf base salary for a strong trader.
• Deferred compensation applies at some firms, with part of the bonus vesting over subsequent years.

Two cautions on the numbers you will see quoted online. Reported figures skew heavily toward the most selective firms, which are not representative of the industry. And bonuses vary enormously by year and by desk, so a headline total compensation figure from a good year is not a reliable expectation.

The genuine advantage of the employed route is asymmetry in your favour. You trade the firm's capital, you receive a salary whether or not you make money that quarter, and you carry no personal financial downside beyond losing the job. That is a materially different risk profile from any independent trading arrangement. The phrase "prop trader salary" belongs to this route only; for what a funded trader actually takes home, which is a profit share with no floor, see our guide to prop trader earnings.

Which Firms Hire Prop Traders?

The best-known institutional prop trading firms include Jane Street, Optiver, IMC Trading, SIG, Citadel Securities, Jump Trading, DRW, Five Rings, Akuna Capital, Tower Research and Flow Traders. Most recruit globally through graduate programmes and internships, with hubs in New York, Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Sydney.

Broad groupings, since they hire for different profiles:

• Options market makers. Optiver, IMC, SIG, Akuna. Heavy emphasis on probability, mental math and options theory. SIG is known for a poker-influenced training approach.
• Multi-asset and quantitative. Jane Street, Jump Trading, DRW, Five Rings. Strong programming expectations alongside quantitative reasoning.
• Market-making at scale. Citadel Securities, Flow Traders, Tower Research. Large, infrastructure-heavy operations.

Practical notes on applying. Timing is the most common avoidable mistake, because applications open very early relative to start dates and close once cohorts fill. Internships are the primary pipeline, and converting an internship is a far higher-probability route than applying directly for a full-time role. And the tests are practisable: mental arithmetic under time pressure, probability, and expected-value reasoning all improve substantially with deliberate preparation.

Worth stating plainly: these firms hire small numbers. Acceptance rates below 1% are normal, and cohorts are counted in the dozens to low hundreds globally per year. Preparing seriously is worthwhile, but treating it as the only viable way into trading the firm's capital would be a mistake.

What Does the Prop Trading Hiring Process Look Like?

The process typically runs from an online quantitative test, through one or two interviews on probability and expected value, to a final round of trading games and market-making simulations. Market knowledge is barely tested. Speed, accuracy under pressure, and clear reasoning through uncertainty are what firms are actually measuring.

What each stage is really assessing:

The online test. Timed mental arithmetic, often deliberately harder than can be completed in full. Optiver's well-known format asks for 80 arithmetic questions in 8 minutes. The score matters, but so does composure under a clock designed to overwhelm.

Probability and brain teasers. Expected value, conditional probability, and problems with no clean answer where the interviewer is watching how you decompose them. Saying your reasoning out loud is part of the test.

Market-making games. You are asked to quote two-sided prices on something with an uncertain value, often a silly premise like the number of windows in a building. The interviewer trades against you and feeds you information. They are watching whether you widen your spread when uncertain, update on new information, and manage the position you accumulate.

Cultural fit. Trading floors run on fast, direct communication and being willing to say you were wrong. Firms screen hard for this.

Almost none of this rewards chart-reading skill or market opinions, which is why strong retail traders sometimes underperform in these processes and strong mathematicians with no trading background sail through.

Can You Become a Prop Trader Without Being Hired?

If you are not on a quantitative graduate track, the realistic route to trading someone else's capital is a funded account. You pay an evaluation fee, prove you can trade within defined risk rules, and receive a share of the profits you generate. There is no interview, no degree requirement, and no employer.

This is a genuinely different arrangement, not a lesser version of the same one. Our guide to what a funded account is covers the structure itself.

You get no salary, so unprofitable months pay nothing. You are not an employee. Your financial downside is capped at the evaluation fee rather than being zero. In exchange you get access without gatekeeping, you can start at any age and from any background, you work remotely on your own schedule, and you keep a large share of what you generate rather than receiving a discretionary bonus.

The gate is different too. The institutional route filters on quantitative aptitude before you trade anything. The funded route filters on demonstrated discipline while trading, which is why the failure rate is high for reasons that have little to do with mathematics. Our analysis of why most traders fail prop challenges covers what actually goes wrong, and the funded trader mindset covers the psychology that separates the minority who pass.

The full mechanics of evaluations, rules and payouts are covered separately in our guides on how to get a funded trading account and what a prop firm is.

Which Route Suits You?

The institutional route suits quantitative graduates who want a salary, structured training and no personal financial risk, and who can compete for a very small number of places. The funded route suits self-directed traders who already have a method, want to start now regardless of background, and accept no salary in exchange for a large profit share.

An honest way to decide:

If you are a final-year student with a strong mathematics record, apply to the graduate programmes. The process is competitive but the return is substantial and preparation genuinely improves your odds.

If you are not on that track, the graduate route is close to closed and pretending otherwise wastes years. The funded route is the open door. It is not easier, since most people fail the evaluation, but the barrier is discipline and method rather than credentials. The steps, requirements and costs of that route are in our guide on how to get a funded trading account.

Pipcy runs two evaluation routes: Pipcy Classic for percentage-based multi-asset trading and Pips Mastery for pip-based forex traders, with no daily drawdown and no trailing drawdown on either. Free Pipcy Academy access is included, which is the closest thing the retail route has to the structured training the institutional path provides.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you become a prop trader?

At an institutional firm, you apply to a graduate programme or internship, pass a timed quantitative aptitude test, complete probability-based interviews, and finish with trading games at a final round. Alternatively you can trade a funded account, which requires passing a paid evaluation rather than a hiring process, with no degree or interview.

What qualifications do you need to be a prop trader?

Institutional firms overwhelmingly hire mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering and statistics graduates, with programming ability increasingly expected. Finance degrees are not required. Trading licences such as the SIE and Series 57 are usually sponsored after hiring. Funded accounts require no formal qualifications at all.

How much do prop traders make?

Employed prop traders receive a base salary plus a discretionary performance bonus, with the bonus dominating total compensation for profitable traders. Reported packages at top firms are high but skew toward the most selective employers and vary substantially by year and desk. Funded account traders receive a profit share instead, with no salary.

Do you need a degree to be a prop trader?

For institutional employment, effectively yes. Almost all hiring runs through graduate programmes that expect a quantitative degree, often from a target university. For trading a funded account, no. There is no degree requirement, no interview and no age or background restriction, only an evaluation you have to pass.

Which firms hire prop traders?

Well-known institutional prop trading firms include Jane Street, Optiver, IMC Trading, SIG, Citadel Securities, Jump Trading, DRW, Five Rings, Akuna Capital, Tower Research and Flow Traders. Most recruit globally through graduate programmes and internships, with hubs in New York, Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Sydney.

Is prop trading a good career?

For those who get in at an institutional firm it offers high compensation, structured training and no personal capital risk, though it is demanding and performance-driven. Acceptance rates are very low. The funded-account route is far more accessible but provides no salary and no employment security, so the two suit different circumstances.

Can you become a prop trader without a finance background?

Yes, and at institutional firms a finance background is often less useful than a hard quantitative one. Mathematics, physics and computer science graduates are hired far more often than finance graduates. For funded accounts, background is irrelevant entirely, since the evaluation tests trading discipline rather than credentials.

Written by Vladimir Rybakov, Head of PIPCY Academy, CFTe-certified with 19 years of trading experience.

Fact-checked by Snir Ahiel, former co-founder of The5ers and risk management specialist at Pipcy, with 15+ years trading Forex, Stocks, and Options.

Risk disclosure: Trading involves substantial risk. Pipcy provides simulated trading evaluations for educational and assessment purposes. Simulated performance does not represent real trading results, and becoming a funded trader is not guaranteed. Compensation figures described here are general market observations, not expectations or guarantees. Nothing here is financial or career advice.