J, k L salary range for NYC and Pittsburgh

Anonymous · 2025-01-24T03:40:28Z

What is the salary range for a VP-SVP level position in NYC and Pittsburgh?

The “standard range” is entirely dependent on what your role is. I feel like I say this so often and can’t help but feel like you don’t know the industry you’re working in if this isn’t clear.

Comp varies wildly depending on your role if you work in financial services, whether you’re on the sell side (banks, broker dealers, non-bank M&A/capital markets advisory, etc.), a buy side shop (asset managers, private equity, hedge funds, asset owners, etc.), or a vendor. In our case we’re a bank, unless you’re in one of our BNY Investments boutiques, which would be considered buy side. Try to familiarize yourself with this framework as you try to understand your role and further, how you should be compensated. There’s a lot of info online. When doing so, remember that front and back office roles are not all equal across all types of firms - try to find the best like-for-like comparisons to what you do for work. Back office fund administration (which isn’t really a “bank” function, you don’t need a balance sheet to do this) will be comped lower than back office sales & trading. Both will be comped less than front office roles.

Some examples: a VP in NYC in custody bank operations might make $90k base and get a $3k bonus. A VP who is in a front office (non-investment banking) client management role might make $200k base and get a ~$100k bonus. A VP in a front office M&A group at an investment bank might make $750k all in (in a good year). A VP at a buy side PE shop on an investment team might make close to a million all in. A back office VP on the buy side (liquid traditional investments, not PE) might make ~$160k all in if they’re supporting investment activity. In Pittsburgh, a lot of the front office roles aren’t available (not just a BNY problem) and VP roles are almost always in the back office support category, and so bonuses and salaries will be much lower.

The point is, all banks (BNY included) have a wide range of compensation that mostly depends on how close your role is to revenue recognition. If you’re working with clients and closing deals/generating revenue, you’re going to be well compensated relative to the back office. If you’re on the buy side and you’re making the investment decisions/taking market risk on behalf of your firm, you’ll be well compensated relative to all the roles that support you. There will be some notable examples that fall outside the front office/back office spectrum, such as corp. finance roles that allocate balance sheet for NII generation, or corp. strategy, or in-house counsel, all of which would also pay reasonable well despite not directly supporting clients or generating fee-based revenue. So it’s really impossible to say what a standard range of compensation is unless you give an indication of the type of work you’re doing.

At the end of the day ask yourself, am I directly responsible for bringing in revenue and generating fees and signing new deals with clients? Or am I an expense line on our financial statements, a required expense to service the clients we already have? Then try to find comparable roles from there to base your expectation of base pay and bonus for your location.

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