In todays environment, is it much easier to get a quant developer position than straight up quant (entry level)? What are compensation/work hour comparison between the two?

It does seem easier to be a quant developer, though this is true in most market conditions, it seems more true now.

how much difference is there between the day to day work of a quant and the day to day work of a quant developer. ?

and how much difference is there in the pay?

The Quant I know all do a lot of codings. But it seems they have freedom to do whatever they want, like what language etc. QD ususally follow more software development methodology.

QuoteOriginally posted by: BlackSwan2The Quant I know all do a lot of codings. But it seems they have freedom to do whatever they want, like what language etc. QD ususally follow more software development methodology.This is correct. QDs usually develop in C++ and check-in code in ClearCase or use whatever code version control techniques. They should be ready to fix any bugs or performance issues in the model libary. In other words, they are glorified programmers and the difference of QD and Non-Quant Developer is that QD may know more on the modeling side. But the bottom line, QD is after all a developer/programmer.Quants may make a lot of use of stochastics/mathematics. They may make a lot of use of SAS, etc. They are actually doing the modeling (of course front desk quant is different in that they do less modeling than a research quant on term structure model etc).It's hard to compare the pay. But if they sit within the same group, some quantitative modeling group, let's say. Then you are guarantteed that the Quants get much better pay than QDs.