From a quant dev role at a large (but secretive !) hedge fund, how difficult is it to move back to a similiar role at a large investment bank ?

shouldn't be difficult at all - any decent prop desk will probably be keen to talk to you.

If you are planning a move you may first want to have your Lawyer take a long hard look over your employment contract. Often these "large (but secretive)" hedge funds are very keen for their work to stay secretive and consequently factor into their contracts very aggressive (more so than Investment Banks) restrictive covenants preventing you from working for any competitors for a set period of time. These covenants are only enforceable so long as they meet a reasonability test, how reasonable they are will depend a lot on what you do and what you are exposed to in terms of proprietary info that is critical to their revenue generation. On the upside six months paid holiday may be just what your after. Worth noting that if you have misplaced your copy of your contract its rather difficult to request one from your emplyer with out obvious inferences being drawn.In terms of your marketability you should have little problem finding a job back on the sell side, providing of course your actually good at what you do.Out of interest, why the wish to move back to a bank? I would be interested on your take on the downsides of working for a fund as most people I know in funds bless the day they left the bureaucracy and politics of a big bank.

>I would be interested on your take on the downsides of working for a fund as most people I know in funds bless the day they left the >bureaucracy and politics of a big bank.for starters, its much harder to bullshit your way around a HF,precisely beaouse of thatso if you are not contributing to the bottom line directly, you're out