The best engineers at banks are often traders. The majority of their compensation is given in the form of year-end bonuses. From my limited understanding, trade

The best engineers at banks are often traders. The majority of their compensation is given in the form of year-end bonuses. From my limited understanding, traders at the top banks can clear seven figures in annual compensation after five to eight years if they are talented. Tech itself is often viewed as a cost center at banks, rather than a profit center. Many of its teams are not the best programmers, nor do they need to be. Their job is to understand the tools, interact with personnel in the profit centers, and use that feedback to make secure and useful updates to the firm's tools in a timely manner. That said, there are some superstar coders who work at banks. They just don't tend to be fresh-out-of-college millennials. Bjarne Stroustrup is an example.