What lies beneath the juicy IIT job offers

As Wall Street's top quant firms to Big Tech giants A kick off the hiring season at the Indian Institutes of Technology, salaries offered are expected to top a crore of rupees. But recruiters are not giving the graduates a free pass.

- Pratishtha Bagai & Devina Sengupta

To prevent them from jumping ship, these lucrative compensation packages often come with riders, including joining bonuses, restricted stock units, and clawback provisions.

Samsara Inc is expected to offer a compensation of up to ₹1.2 crore (£109,580) at IITs for software engineer roles, according to Mint's review of job profiles with placement cells.

But this includes a performance bonus of £6,630 and £36,650 worth of equity vested over three years. A relocation bonus is also available for candidates who will need to relocate to London.

High-frequency trader NK Securities, one of the top recruiters at the IITs by compensation offered, is seeking a quantitative researcher and a software developer. While the offer is expected to be around ₹80 lakh, it includes a joining bonus of 2 lakh, a fixed bonus of about 25 lakh, and variable pay and non-cash benefits.

Joining bonuses have typically been part of the compensation. But over the years, startups and AI companies have been wooing IIT students with stock options to compete with the more established firms.