• Hedge funds are known for top-notch comp, and applications for H-1B visas reveal what some pay. 
• Managers like Bridgewater, Citadel, Point72, AQR, and more rely on dozens of non-US citizens.
• Base salaries break six figures at nearly all funds, and that’s not even including bonuses.

For many Wall Street aspirants, a career at a top hedge fund is the holy grail. For those who succeed, compensation has the potential to eclipse nearly any other profession in the country — let alone finance. 

The hedge fund industry has transformed over the past 15 years. Whereas fundamental investment strategies once ruled the day, increasingly the flow of talent and capital is shifting toward firms with sophisticated quantitative strategies and data-mining operations. 

Today, most of the largest and most successful funds have significant quant operations, if not a complete emphasis on quantitative investing. Firms like AQR, Bridgewater, Citadel, D.E. Shaw, Point72, and Two Sigma vigorously compete for the most promising young financial minds — and they pay hefty sums to lure in top candidates. 

Some of the brightest minds in systematic trading and quantitative research were born and educated outside the US, and some funds stock their US rosters with foreign labor. When US companies file paperwork for visas on behalf of current or prospective foreign workers, they’re required to say how much base compensation the workers are offered. And every year, the Office of Foreign Labor Certification discloses this salary data in an enormous dataset.

Business Insider analyzed the agency’s disclosure data to shed light on what these hedge funds paid for talent. 

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