There is no single door into energy trading. Most people who work in it are not traders, and many traders did not start as one. They began as analysts, schedulers, shift traders, engineers or graduates on a rotation, and moved to a trading seat once a desk trusted them.
This article is a map of the ways in, for the UK and Europe. It covers who hires, the jobs on and around a desk, the four usual routes, what adverts ask for, and what the work pays. We build the systems trading desks run on, so it is written from beside the desk and from what employers publish, not from a trader's memoir.
If you are new to the subject itself, read Energy Trading 101 first.
Who hires
Five kinds of firm trade energy, and they hire differently.
| Kind of firm | Examples | What it trades for |
|---|---|---|
| Utilities and generators | SSE, Centrica, RWE, EDF, ScottishPower | To sell what its power stations make and buy what its customers use |
| Oil and gas majors | Shell, bp | To move its own production, and to trade around it |
| Trading houses | Vitol, Trafigura, Mercuria | To profit from moving and storing commodities |
| Banks and funds | Investment banks, hedge funds | To profit from price moves, mostly without touching the physical commodity |
| Optimisers and suppliers | Battery operators, flexibility firms, energy suppliers | To earn the most from a fleet of assets, or to buy for customers |
The kind of firm decides the kind of job. A utility has many seats, trains people, and pays a salary with a modest bonus. A trading house or a fund has few seats, expects you to arrive useful, and pays for results. A battery optimiser is small and young, and often hires people a large desk would not yet look at.
The jobs on and around a desk
"Energy trader" is one job among many. A desk needs all of these, and each is a way in.
| Job | What it does | Often suits |
|---|---|---|
| Trader | Takes positions and manages them inside risk limits. Owns the profit and loss. | People who already know one market well |
| Shift or real-time trader | Balances a portfolio hour by hour, around the clock, in the day-ahead and within-day markets | Graduates and career changers who will work shifts |
| Analyst | Forecasts supply, demand and price, and tells the desk where the market looks wrong | Numerate people who like evidence |
| Originator or structurer | Finds and designs long-term deals with customers and asset owners | People with commercial or legal experience |
| Scheduler or operator | Makes delivery happen: nominations, shipping, notifications to the grid | Organised people who stay calm when plans change |
| Risk analyst | Measures the desk's positions and exposure, and checks them against limits | Finance, maths and physics graduates |
| Settlements analyst | Checks that what was traded was delivered, invoiced and paid | A common first job with no experience |
| Quant, developer or business analyst | Builds the models and systems the desk runs on | Software engineers, data scientists, business analysts |
Two things are worth knowing about this table.
The seats are few. A trading business employs several people around each trader. If you will only accept a trading seat, you are competing for the scarcest job in the building.
The jobs around the trader are careers, not waiting rooms. Many people move from scheduling, risk or analysis into trading. Many others stay, because the work is interesting and well paid. Our career roadmaps cover several of these jobs in detail: senior power market analyst, quantitative developer, ETRM business analyst, AI engineer and head of trading technology.
Four routes in
1. A graduate programme
The large firms run programmes that rotate graduates through several teams over about two years. Trafigura, for example, describes a two-year commercial programme "designed for individuals with the ambition to become the next generation of traders". It is based in Geneva, Singapore or Houston. A separate two-year programme leads to operations and logistics. Its stated minimum is A-levels at BBB, or the equivalent elsewhere, and fluent English.
Three things to know:
- Applications often open about a year ahead. Many open in the autumn for a start the following September, and some in the new year.
- Technology and operations tracks are worth a look, not only the trading track. They put you in the same building.
- A place on a programme is not a trading seat. It is two years in which to earn one.
Energy Trading 101 keeps a dated list of graduate programmes that are open now.
2. A shift desk
Power and gas are traded every hour of every day, so utilities, suppliers and battery operators staff a desk around the clock. Shift trading is the most open door into a trading job: the adverts ask for a numerate degree and an interest in the market, not years of experience. It teaches the physical market quickly, because you watch it clear every half hour.
The cost is the rota. Nights, weekends and bank holidays are part of the job, and many people do not stay long for that reason. Those who stay two or three years often move on to a day-time trading, analysis or optimisation role with a real record behind them.
3. An analyst, risk or operations seat
Join the desk in a supporting job and move across. This is the slowest route and the most reliable one. A scheduler learns what can go wrong in delivery. A risk analyst learns how positions are measured. An analyst learns to hold a view on price and defend it. Each is something a trader must know, and a desk prefers to promote someone whose judgement it has watched for two years.
Nobody will move you automatically. You have to ask, show the work, and sometimes change firm to do it.
4. A sideways move
Desks also hire experienced people from outside trading, for what they already know:
- Software engineers and data scientists, to build pricing, forecasting and trading systems. This is the route we know best: the roadmaps above are written for it.
- Engineers from power stations, networks and oil and gas, who know how the physical assets behave.
- Meteorologists, because weather sets both demand and renewable output. SSE's own careers page lists roles "from Energy Trader to Meteorologist, Risk Manager to Energy Market Analyst".
- People from banking, accounting and audit, into risk, product control and finance.
The gap to close is always the same: you know your craft, and not yet the market. A hiring manager wants to see that you understand how the desk makes money and how your work helps it.
What employers ask for
The adverts are the best evidence. We read these two as reproduced on job boards. A ScottishPower advert for an Energy Trader in Glasgow, posted in November 2026, asked for a "degree-level qualification in a numerical or energy-related discipline", "familiarity with UK or EU energy markets and/or a strong interest in commodity markets", and said programming experience "such as Python, VBA or similar, would be beneficial". An OVO advert for an Optimisation and Balancing Trader, also from 2026, asked for a degree in an "analytical, numerical or science based subject or relevant work experience", and for comfort making decisions under pressure.
Put plainly, adverts like these ask for four things:
- Numbers. A degree in maths, physics, engineering, economics or similar, or work that proves the same.
- The market. How power and gas are bought and sold, what sets the price, and what happened in it this week.
- Tools. Excel always. Python more each year. The recruiter Selby Jennings wrote in December 2025 that junior hiring in oil trading had "narrowed to graduates with coding and analytics skills", and that "Python, SQL, and risk tools are becoming standard".
- Judgement under pressure. A decision made in time, with what you know, that you can explain afterwards.
Neither advert, as reproduced on the job boards where we read them, mentions a licence or a trading certificate.
What it pays
Pay in energy trading is a salary plus a bonus, and the bonus is where firms differ most. Very few firms publish what traders earn, so every figure below names its source.
Starting out
| Advert | Salary | Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| ScottishPower, Energy Trader, Glasgow (November 2026) | From £43,600 | Up to 10% |
| OVO, Optimisation and Balancing Trader, Bristol or London (2026) | £35,000 to £48,000 | 15% on target |
These are two adverts, not a survey. Both are utility or supplier jobs, and they show the published end of the market: £35,000 to £48,000 or a little more, with a bonus of 10% to 15% of salary. Shift roles often add a shift allowance.
Experienced traders
Trading houses and funds do not advertise pay. The nearest published figures are a recruiter's ranges for oil traders in the UK. They are oil figures: a guide to the top of the market, not what a power or gas desk pays.
| Experience | Base salary, UK oil trading |
|---|---|
| 5 to 7 years | £125,000 to £175,000 |
| 7 to 10 years | £150,000 to £200,000 |
| 10 to 15 years | £175,000 to £250,000 |
| Head of trading | £250,000 and above |
Source: Selby Jennings, 2026 Oil Trading Market and Compensation Outlook, December 2025. Its figures for Germany run from €110,000 to €160,000 at 5 to 7 years, up to €250,000 and above for a head of trading.
For analysts, developers and business analysts, each of the career roadmaps linked above has its own pay table.
How bonuses work
There are three common arrangements.
- A percentage of salary. Usual at utilities and suppliers. The advert states a ceiling, such as "up to 10%", and the firm's results and your own decide how much of it you get.
- A discretionary pool. Usual at trading houses and majors. The firm sets aside a share of the year's trading profit, and managers divide it. Your desk's result, your part in it and the firm's year all count.
- A share of the profit you made. Usual at funds and some trading houses. The contract gives you a stated percentage of your book's profit, after costs.
Selby Jennings reports that discretionary bonuses "are still common", that bonus multipliers "often range from 50% to 500%", and that profit-linked bonuses "usually sit between 8% and 15%". It does not say what a multiplier is applied to; we read it as a multiple of base salary. To see what those words mean in money, take three made-up cases. They show the arithmetic, not a typical result:
| Arrangement | Sum | Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| 10% of a £45,000 salary | 0.10 x 45,000 | £4,500 |
| A multiplier of 100%, if applied to a £150,000 salary | 1.00 x 150,000 | £150,000 |
| 10% of a £5 million profit on your book | 0.10 x 5,000,000 | £500,000 |
Three cautions belong beside that table.
A bonus is not a salary. eFinancialCareers' 2026 pay survey, which is global, found that average pay in commodities sales and trading fell 14% in 2025, because average bonuses fell 37%. A good year in the market lifts almost everyone, and a quiet one does the opposite.
Bonuses are hard to compare. HC Group's 2026 salary report for energy trading leaves bonus ranges out altogether, because pay structures differ too much between firms to compare like with like. Two traders with the same title can be on quite different terms.
A large bonus may be paid late. At some firms part is held back for a year or more, or paid in shares, and can be lost if you leave. Ask how the bonus is worked out and when it is paid before you compare two offers.
What interviews test
Whatever the job, an interview for a desk comes back to three questions.
- Do you understand the market? Expect "what set yesterday's power price?" or "why is gas up this month?". They want the reason, not the number.
- Can you think in numbers, quickly? Expect mental arithmetic, a margin to work out, or a position to value. Mark-to-market and P&L and the spark spread are the two sums asked most often.
- Have you done anything, or only read? A model you built, a price you followed for a month, a view you wrote down before the event and checked afterwards.
The third is where most candidates are thin, and it is the one you can fix without anyone's permission.
A first month
Four weeks, a few hours each, with something to show at the end.
| Week | Read | Do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Energy Trading 101 and physical and financial trading | Pick one market, such as British power or European gas. Write down its price every day. |
| 2 | Power trading explained and the global gas market | For one day, explain in a paragraph why the price was what it was. |
| 3 | The spark spread and energy derivatives explained | Work out a gas plant's margin from that day's gas, carbon and power prices. |
| 4 | Mark-to-market and P&L and what an ETRM system is | Write one page: what you expect the price to do next week, and why. Check it a week later. |
At the end you have a month of prices you followed, a margin you calculated and a view you tested. That is more than most applicants bring, and it is the start of the record a desk hires on.
Sources
- Selby Jennings, 2026 Oil Trading Market and Compensation Outlook, December 2025, for experienced traders' base salaries, bonus arrangements and the skills firms hire for.
- HC Group, Global Energy Trading Salary Report 2026 (sample edition, PDF), for why bonus ranges are hard to compare.
- eFinancialCareers, 2026 pay survey, sales and trading by product, 11 May 2026, for the fall in commodities pay and bonuses in 2025.
- Trafigura, early career opportunities, for its graduate programmes and minimum requirements.
- SSE, Energy Markets careers, for the range of roles in a utility's trading business.
- ScottishPower, advert for an Energy Trader in Glasgow, posted in November 2026, and OVO, advert for an Optimisation and Balancing Trader, both read on 12 November 2026 as reproduced on job boards.