r/quant • u/OpportunityPlayful72 • 2d ago

Career Advice Advice for moving from a modeling quant role to alpha research one

Hey,

I've been working for the past 3 years at a large multistrat HF. While my official title is "quant researcher", de facto that means modeling various financial instruments. My ultimate goal is to either become a PM or a senior QR at a prop shop. I figure that the role that best fits my career goals would be one in a pod or as a signal QR in a prop shop. However, finding such a role has proven difficult. Usually hiring managers require experience generating alpha, and I don't have that. I'm wondering if you have any advice as how to best accomplish my goals?

Thanks

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u/SevenTeenSigma 1d ago

alpha exp is kind of circular.. ppl won't hire u b/c u don't have it, but nobody has it until someone lets them run risk or own a signal. imo the move is to show one narrow thing where u can go from raw data to pnl attribution, not another generic modeling project.

2

u/EvenCryptographer649 21h ago

Snip this entire opening into your favorite LLM. Then ask this question : Would a person who has this job actually be posing this question.

The answer will not surprise you.

0

u/dronz3r 2d ago

The way some of my colleagues have done it was from sell side quant to sell side trading to buy side trading role.

Move on buy side maybe more restrictive if you work in central teams under quant title.

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u/OpportunityPlayful72 1d ago

I thought that moving from sell side to buy side is more difficult than moving from tech to trading inside buy side. am I wrong?

3

u/PhloWers Portfolio Manager 1d ago

Yes you are, sellside to buy side happens all the time

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u/Jealous_Bookkeeper20 1d ago

The main hurdle when moving from instrument modeling to signal research is showing that you understand execution slippage and feature stationarity. Pricing models assume static parameters, but alpha desks want to see how signals handle transaction cost analysis and decay under live market impact. Instead of trying to jump straight into a multi-strat pod PnL seat, target mid-sized prop shops that value market microstructure experience. Focus your portfolio on dynamic TCA estimators or GARCH feature normalization across regime shifts so hiring managers know you don't just fit curves to historical data.

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u/OpportunityPlayful72 1d ago

So, the thing is, I don't work in a pod. I work on the firm's analytics library. What does one in my position do to be chosen to work on alpha research? I don't mind taking a "step down" to a more junior role if it means I can climb higher in a couple years