Pay for private equity secondaries professionals was mighty after a strong 2025
If you grew up wanting to work in private equity (for some reason), you probably didn’t grow up wanting to work in secondaries, of all things. But if you’ve found yourself in that situation, you’re probably making a pretty penny out of it.
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Data from recruitment consultancy Jensen Partners shows that the average professional working in secondaries earned $793k for their work in 2025 in normal (salary and bonus combined) compensation, compared to the average alternative asset management professional who earned $800k.
Pay was better at lower ranks than higher ones. Secondaries VPs earned $510k in median compensation in 2025, compared to $410k for VPs in private credit and $450k for alternative asset management VPs in general.
Pay was not quite so generous higher up the ladder. Secondaries department heads earned “just” $1.08m on average in 2025, compared to $1.2m for partners in alternative asset management in general, and $1.43m for partners in private credit specifically.
One place where secondaries pay was a bit more on par with the market was in its carried interest. This is a type of compensation granting professionals working on a deal a slice of that deal’s profits. Secondaries professionals, on average, received $875k in carried interest on average for their work in 2025, compared to the private credit average of $600k.
Things might change in 2026. In an April report, JPMorgan noted that the secondaries market hit $224bn in 2025, which was a record year, and was up 41% on 2024. The bank called it a “booming” market.
As such, secondaries professionals are in high demand these days. A slew of moves have happened since the start of the year, including JPMorgan’s hiring of Will Boyle, as global head of secondary advisory from Morgan Stanley, as Bloomberg reported earlier this month. One of the biggest teams in the space is boutique bank Evercore's, which is headed up by ex-UBS banker Nigel Dawn. Bloomberg noted in October last year that Dawn's 150-person team generated about 13% of Evercore's advisory revenue, and they were paid a collective $150m.
Johnson Associates, the compensation consultancy, estimated after Q1 that secondaries bonuses would be up by 5 to 10% at the end of the year, relative to 2025.
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