IIT placements 2026-27: HFT, quant and AI offers tracker

Live log 2026-27

Rows start on Day 1, with media figures marked "reported by".

Cadence. Daily through Phase 1, then weekly through Phase 2. What gets a row. A named firm and IIT in an official IIT statement or in The Economic Times, Mint, Business Standard, Times of India, Hindustan Times, Indian Express or Moneycontrol. Social posts and student forums do not qualify. Corrections. Email piyush@sytalent.com with a link to a qualifying source.

Last season (2025-26) at a glance

Trading firms led the day one headlines in December 2025, and official IIT releases confirm several as recruiters, but no IIT published a firm-level salary. Every package below is a tier-1 media report.

Business Standard (19 September 2025) also named Jane Street, Hudson River Trading and Millennium Management as regular HFT visitors. We found no tier-1 report of a 2025-26 Day 1 offer from Jane Street, Optiver, IMC or Citadel Securities, so they are not in the table. Larger figures carried only by outlets outside our source list are left out.

How IIT placements work

IIT final placements run in two phases: Phase 1 from 1 December into early January, and Phase 2 from mid-January. IIT Bombay's 2026-27 policy applies its second-job rules "only in Phase II from January 2027".

• Days and slots. Each day is split into slots, and the most sought-after employers get the earliest Day 1 slots. IIT Madras's recruiter guide says offers must be made in the interview slot.
• One student, one job. A student who accepts an offer is marked placed and leaves the process; IIT Madras gives 24 working hours to accept.
• PPOs. Pre-placement offers come out of summer internships. IIT Madras set a closed PPO deadline of 13 September 2025; IIT Bombay requires PPO responses by 30 November 2026 at the latest.
• Disclosure. In January 2024 the All IIT Placement Committee (AIPC), the placement heads of all 23 IITs, reached a consensus not to publish highest packages, Business Standard reported, citing Indian Express. IIT Bombay's policy bars students from sharing placement information with the media. So most crore-plus figures come from students, not institutes.
• Penalties. Companies that often revoke offers can be reported to the AIPC for possible blacklisting across all IITs, per IIT Madras's guide.

Why HFT firms dominate day one

HFT and quant firms take Day 1 slots because they pay at the top of the campus market and hire few students, so institutes schedule them early. Their roles also fit what IIT computer science, mathematics and electrical engineering students are trained in: probability, algorithms and systems programming.

Mint reported on 2 December 2025 that Quadeye, Graviton, NK Securities, Quantbox Research and Squarepoint Capital were using joining and performance bonuses to "secure the candidate as soon as the offer is made". Selection starts months before Day 1, with pre-placement talks from late August and tests from mid-September, which is why HFT and quant internships matter. For who hires in India, see top HFT companies in India and HFT jobs in India.

What offers include

A headline campus figure adds up several parts, and only some recur. Read the structure before comparing two numbers.

• Base salary. Fixed annual pay, the only part that recurs with certainty.
• Joining bonus. Paid once, often with a clawback if the hire leaves early. Mint reported trading firms using joining bonuses in December 2025.
• Relocation. One-time support for international roles, such as Da Vinci's reported Amsterdam roles.
• Retention and deferred pay. Bonuses or stock that vest over time; Mint reported Texas Instruments granting restricted stock units vesting over four years.
• Performance bonus. At trading firms it moves with desk and firm results; first-year amounts are sometimes guaranteed, sometimes not.

Foreign salaries are converted to rupees at the day's exchange rate, so headlines move with currencies. For pay after campus, see HFT and quant salaries in India 2026.

AI firms' rising share

AI employers now sit beside trading firms near the top of IIT recruiter lists, though tier-1 media rarely attach verified pay figures to them. Every official 2025-26 list we checked named AI or AI-infrastructure employers.

IIT Delhi's double-digit recruiters included Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Glean, an enterprise AI search company; IIT Kanpur named Databricks; IIT Kharagpur named Nvidia and Databricks. Mint reported on 1 December 2025 that agentic AI firms were competing for IIT graduates, with some AI scientist roles advertised above ₹1 crore, and on 2 December that newer AI-focused firms had taken top slots in recent seasons. See AI jobs in India for roles and pay after campus.

What it means for employers who cannot compete on day one

Most fintechs, brokers, bank technology arms and AI startups will not win a Day 1 slot, and they do not need one. From our desk, employers that hire strong IIT talent consistently use three routes.

• Build the PPO pipeline. A well-run internship with real trading or model work converts to PPOs before Day 1. PPOs are rising: IIT Kharagpur recorded 457 in Phase I and IIT Delhi more than 300 by December 2025.
• Hire laterals with 2 to 5 years' experience. IIT graduates who joined big tech, banks or a first trading firm often look to move after two or three years. They have been tested in production, and their expectations are anchored to current pay, not campus headlines.
• Sell the work, not the number. Candidates who turn down trading offers usually choose ownership: a model in production, a desk to build, a direct line to a founder.

Our quant researcher brief sets out what to test for, and our HFT talent search practice runs lateral searches, drawing on a 50K+ talent network and work for 65+ clients.

What it means for students

A Day 1 trading offer is one outcome among many, and reported figures describe a small number of students.

• Prepare early. Trading firm tests start in mid-September; probability, mental maths and C++ or Python matter more than CPI alone.
• Read the structure. Ask what is base, what is one-time, and what clawbacks apply.
• A missed Day 1 is not a ceiling. Many quants move into trading two to five years after graduating, from big tech, banks or AI teams. Join the SYTalent quant network to hear about roles that are not advertised.

Sources and method

Only official IIT statements and seven tier-1 publications are used. Media-reported packages are labelled "reported", never confirmed.

More research is on the Intelligence hub.