Many candidates interested in quantitative trading encounter two common roles: quant trader and quant researcher. They share overlap, but they involve different responsibilities, incentives, and long-term outcomes. Understanding these differences is useful when evaluating how you want to participate in markets.

Quantitative researchers focus on building components of trading systems. They often:

• explore datasets
• test hypotheses
• design signals or features
• evaluate statistical relationships
• document research for review
   

Researchers typically contribute at the idea and modeling stages. In many firms, researchers do not control execution, capital allocation, or live risk. Their work is handed off to traders, portfolio managers, or centralized execution engines.

Because researchers are usually part of a structured team, compensation tends to include a base salary with performance-based bonuses. This can be appealing if someone prefers stability, specialization, and clear scope.

Quant traders operate across the full lifecycle of a strategy. They may collaborate with researchers or conduct their own research, but they also assume responsibility for:

• deciding what to deploy
• capital allocation and scaling
• execution and order handling
• monitoring and risk management
• adapting to market changes
   

Traders are measured by outcomes over time. Their compensation typically reflects performance and ownership over deployed capital. This attracts people who want broader responsibility, fast feedback loops, and a direct link between research and results.

Researchers typically operate in the research half of the lifecycle. Traders operate across the entire lifecycle, including:

• ideation
• modeling
• simulation and stress testing
• production engineering
• sizing and scaling
• managing live risk
• retiring strategies
   

This lifecycle distinction affects how people think about career trajectories. Someone comparing a research role with a base salary to a trading role with performance-based compensation might think about the first year. It is equally important to think about the fifth year. People who want to take strategies from concept to deployment often gravitate toward trader roles because that is where end-to-end ownership lives.

This is not advice. It is industry structure.

Most firms consider research output to be proprietary intellectual property. As a result, non-competes, NDAs, and non-solicitation clauses are common. This is not unique to trading. Similar patterns exist in chip design, biotech, and defense.

Researchers who decide later that they want to trade may discover that their work is not portable, either legally or practically. Firms also have no structural incentive to make it easy for researchers to become traders because researchers are valuable, and training a trader effectively takes years.

These realities do not make research a bad choice. They are simply part of how firms protect their investments.

Candidates who choose research roles often prefer:

• stability
• well-defined tasks
• specialization
• academic or theoretical depth
• salary-based compensation
   

Candidates who choose trading roles often prefer:

• ownership
• fast feedback loops
• breadth across research and execution
• performance-based compensation
• entrepreneurial environments
   

Neither path is superior. They are different.

This section shares industry patterns that candidates often discover only after several years. It is not advice and it is not a recommendation. It is context that may help people ask better questions and think long-term.

1. Partial Ownership Can Limit Growth
Researchers often generate valuable components of a strategy but do not control how the strategy is deployed. Someone else allocates capital, monitors risk, and captures the full performance. This surprises people who enjoy building things end to end.

2. Strategy Portability Is Low in Research Roles
Strategies and datasets are considered firm property. Many researchers assume they can later leave and trade independently using their knowledge. Legal constraints and practical constraints make this difficult. Firms protect their IP aggressively because it is expensive to build.

3. Moving from Research to Trading Is Not Guaranteed
Some researchers eventually realize they want to make sizing and execution decisions. Transitioning internally can be challenging because firms do not want to lose researchers, and the skillset for trading includes decision making, risk management, rejection tolerance, and market intuition. These are not always cultivated in research roles.

4. Most Firms Do Not Train Traders From Scratch
It takes time, capital, and mentorship to develop a trader. Many large firms solve this by hiring people who already demonstrate track records. This leaves limited paths for researchers who later want to switch.

5. Five-Year Horizons Matter More Than One-Year Horizons
A first-year research role may feel more comfortable because of a base salary and structure. A trading role may feel uncomfortable because responsibility and uncertainty are visible. The trajectories diverge over longer horizons. People often start reconsidering after three to five years, not after one year.

None of these points imply that researcher roles are bad or that trading roles are better. Both are valid. The goal of sharing this is to help candidates form accurate expectations about career mechanics rather than rely on assumptions or anecdotes.