Fintech has grown from a niche segment to a core part of Europe’s financial ecosystem. Paris has quietly become one of its strongest hubs, combining global banks, trading houses, and scale-ups with a deep pool of quantitative talent. As capital markets and crypto continue to digitise, the demand for traders, analysts, and quantitative profiles shows little sign of slowing.
Against this backdrop, compensation has remained remarkably resilient. Even with cost-cutting and more cautious hiring, specialised skills in quantitative finance, risk, and data-driven trading continue to command a premium, especially in France, where Paris concentrates most of the country’s front-office and fintech roles.
This 2025 salary guide focuses on what traders, analysts, and quants actually earn in the French market today, and how education, particularly specialised programmes such as ESILV’s MSc Financial Engineering, shapes career paths and pay trajectories.
The fintech talent market in France, 2025
Over the past decade, Paris has developed into a serious competitor to London, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam for quantitative and trading talent. The ecosystem spans:
- Global investment banks and universal banks
- Proprietary trading firms and hedge funds
- Neobanks, payment fintechs and trading apps
- Regtech, risk and data-analytics providers
In this environment, three broad profiles stand out:
- Traders working on listed and OTC products, increasingly supported by algorithmic strategies
- Analysts supporting trading, risk, corporate finance, product and data-driven decision-making
- Quants / financial engineers designing and implementing pricing, risk and trading models
Despite market volatility and occasional hiring freezes, salary data in France suggest that finance and fintech roles remain well paid relative to other sectors, with a clear uplift for mathematically and technologically intensive positions. Average Fintech roles across France, combining various titles, sit around €50,000 gross per year, with higher levels in Paris.
What traders, analysts and quants actually do in fintech
Traders
Front-office traders in fintech and capital markets environments manage risk and execute strategies across asset classes such as equities, fixed income, FX, commodities, derivatives or digital assets. In fintech settings, many roles blend:
- Market-making and liquidity provision
- Algorithmic or systematic trading
- Risk-managed exposure to complex instruments
The role has become deeply intertwined with technology, with traders increasingly working alongside quants and developers on strategy design, back-testing and execution algorithms.
Analysts
“Analyst” is a broad title encompassing several functions in fintech:
- Financial or investment analysts supporting portfolio management, product design or corporate finance
- Risk analysts monitoring market, credit or liquidity risk
- Business/data analysts bridging product, data and operations in high-growth fintechs
Across these sub-roles, strong analytical skills, knowledge of financial instruments and comfort with data tools are the key drivers of employability – and ultimately, pay.
Quants and financial engineers
Quants or financial engineers sit at the intersection of mathematics, programming and market knowledge. Typical responsibilities include:
- Designing pricing models for derivatives and structured products
- Building risk and valuation engines
- Developing algorithmic trading strategies and back-testing frameworks
- Integrating machine learning into forecasting and risk systems
Programmes such as the MSc Financial Engineering at ESILV explicitly target these needs, combining mathematics of randomness, financial markets and instruments, pricing models, data analytics and programming to prepare graduates for roles such as quantitative analyst, risk manager and algorithmic trader.
How much do these roles earn in France in 2025?
The figures below are indicative ranges for the French market in 2025, with a focus on Paris. They combine publicly available data from salary platforms with recent estimates and should be treated as benchmarks rather than guarantees. To keep things comparable, all figures are gross annual base salary, with notes on bonus where relevant. Total compensation for front-office roles can be substantially higher once variable pay is included.
Traders in fintech and capital markets
Salary data for traders in Paris in 2025 shows:
- A typical overall range from around €54,000 to nearly €200,000
- Median total compensation estimates (base + bonus) close to €100,000–€110,000 for experienced traders in major institutions
- For specialised FX traders, entry-level roles (1–3 years) cluster around €60,000–€65,000 base, while senior traders (8+ years) average above €110,000, with bonuses often adding around €20,000 or more to total pay
Fintech firms with strong trading or brokerage components (e.g. market-making or brokerage platforms) often mirror these ranges. However, they may mix in equity or stock options, especially at scale-ups.
Analysts in fintech firms
“Analyst” roles are more numerous and span investment, corporate, risk, and product functions.
Recent estimates for financial analysts in France in 2025 put:
- Junior financial analysts roughly in the €42,000–€50,000 range
- Broader reported analyst ranges extending up to €75,000+ at more senior levels or in high-pressure environments such as investment banking and private equity.
In fintech companies, compensation is often competitive with traditional finance, but structured differently: potentially lower base, offset by equity participation or performance-linked bonuses.
Quants and financial engineers
Quantitative and financial engineering profiles are among the most sought-after in French finance and fintech. Data from Paris indicates that:
- Junior quant analysts earn base salaries typically around €45,000–€60,000, with some sources citing median values near €47,000–€50,000 for early-career roles
- As experience rises, the combination of advanced maths, programming (often Python and C++), and market expertise drives pay towards trading-desk levels, particularly in derivatives, structured products or quantitative hedge funds
The skills premium: how ESILV’s MSc Financial Engineering fits in
In an environment where employers in Paris and across France are competing for a limited pool of technical talent, the “skills premium” has become very clear. Roles involving quantitative modelling, algorithmic trading and advanced risk management consistently sit at the upper end of the salary ranges in this guide.
The MSc Financial Engineering at ESILV directly targets this skills premium by:
- Bridging mathematics, finance and data science
- Covering mathematics of randomness, financial markets and instruments, pricing and models, data analytics and programming, and advanced mathematics and markets
- Reflecting major trends such as high-frequency trading, advanced risk frameworks, and the integration of machine learning with stochastic mathematics
- Preparing graduates for roles such as quantitative analyst, risk manager, algorithmic trader, financial engineer, portfolio manager and more
For employers, this kind of training reduces the gap between graduation and desk-level performance. For graduates, it enhances access to the better-paid segments of the fintech and capital-markets job market in France and abroad.
More information on the MSc FI programme, curriculum and admissions
