Top 5 Highest Paying Internships according to Reddit

Every year, college students around the country apply to work at companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta. While these companies are building exciting products (many of which we use every day), there's another, more enticing reason to pursue a job at these firms—the pay. A paid summer internship is a great opportunity to get some on-the-job work experience, while also earning what can be a very impressive salary. Keep reading below to discover some of the highest paying summer internships, and a few tips on how you can land one yourself!

Top 5 Highest Paying Internships*

1. Algorithm Developer at Hudson River Trading

• $96.17/hour, New York, NY
• Hudson River Trading is a quantitative trading firm headquartered in New York City and founded in 2002. In 2014, it accounted for about 5% of all trading in the United States.

2. Software Engineer at Jane Street

• $96/hour, New York, NY
• Jane Street Capital, typically referred to as Jane Street, is a global proprietary trading firm. The company is one of the world’s largest market-makers, trading more than $17 trillion worth of securities in 2020.

3. Trading Intern at Optiver

• $90/hour, Chicago, IL
• Optiver is a proprietary trading firm and market maker for various exchange-listed financial instruments. Optiver trades listed derivatives, cash equities, exchange-traded funds, bonds, foreign exchange, and other financial products.

4. Trading Intern at Five Rings

• $87.5/hour, New York, NY
• Five Rings is a proprietary trading firm that trades in various domestic and international markets, both established and esoteric.

5. Trading Intern at Akuna Capital

• $84/hour, Chicago, IL
• Akuna Capital is a proprietary trading firm specializing in derivatives market making and sophisticated modeling with a commitment to cutting-edge technology.

You might be starting to notice a pattern—many of the highest paying internships tend to be in quantitative finance. Quantitative finance is the use of mathematical models and extremely large datasets to analyze financial markets and securities. Thus, landing an internship in quantitative finance is notoriously hard—successful applicants often come from a strong interdisciplinary technology background that includes experience in programming, algorithms, logic games, statistics, probability and more. Preparing for quantitative finance interviews boils down to a commitment to practicing your numerical skills as much as possible in the months leading up to your interview.

*The salaries at these firms are often changing – these numbers were last updated 4/28/2022

More High-Paying Internships

This does not mean, however, that there aren’t non-finance internship programs that pay a similar amount for the summer. In fact, many tech companies offer similar compensation packages across roles in engineering, product management, and more.

Software Engineering Intern at Netflix

• $74/hour, San Francisco, CA
• Netflix is an American subscription streaming service and production company with over 200 million global subscribers. Netflix offers a film and television series library through distribution deals as well as its own productions, known as Netflix Originals.

Software Engineering Intern at NVIDIA

• $72/hour, San Francisco, CA
• NVIDIA (the inventor of the GPU) creates interactive graphics on laptops, workstations, mobile devices, notebooks, PCs, and more.

Software Engineerng Intern at Roblox

• $62/hour, San Francisco, CA
• Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program games and play games created by other users.

Software Engineering Intern at Amazon

• $53/hour, Seattle, WA
• Amazon is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.

Software Engineering Intern at Meta

• $50/hour, Menlo Park, CA
• Usually associated with Facebook, Meta is a multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company is the parent organization of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among other subsidiaries.

How do I land one of these internships?

Landing internships in general is an arduous process—employers often don’t give reasons for rejections, and the best source of preparation is usually information found online or through previous interns. However, most top-tier internships have some common features: most quant finance roles place a particular emphasis on high standardized testing scores, while all selective internships tend to look for applicants with high GPAs and deep and meaningful extracurricular involvement.

For tech roles, most employers look for applicants with demonstrated computational strengths. Some popular ways to showcase this are hackathons, academic research in computer science or mathematics, and a well put together portfolio.

Outside of polishing yourself as a candidate, applying to these positions early in the hiring cycle can increase your odds of landing an offer. Many of the firms (both finance and tech) listed above operate on modified recruiting schedules, with many recruiting 6 to 12 months in advance.

Keeping up with these non-traditional hiring timelines can be hard, so the team at Simplify has put together a list of Top Quant Finance Internships to help you discover and apply to high-paying quantitative positions like the ones listed above! This list automatically adds new positions as they are posted, so make sure to check back often!

Ultimately, it's important to keep in mind that the pay of the internship shouldn’t determine its value. Like we mentioned in our last article, the true value of an internship is the early insight you get into what a career path really looks like. Make sure to make the most of your time at the company and maximize the opportunities to learn!

Want to apply to positions faster and stay organized throughout the process? Simplify has you covered—apply to positions in 1-click with the Simplify extension and automatically track your applications on your Applications Dashboard !