FPGA Engineer Intern (Summer 2023 - Chicago)

Optiver is a tech-driven trading firm and leading global market maker. As one of the oldest market making institutions, we are a trusted partner of 70+ exchanges across the globe. Our mission is to constantly improve the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency and acting as a stabilising force no matter the market conditions. With a focus on continuous improvement, we participate in the safeguarding of healthy and efficient markets for everyone who participates.

Optiver Chicago’s culture parallels the energetic city we’re immersed in. Home to the Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Board Options Exchange, and Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago has established itself as the trading capital of the US. Active on leading US exchanges, Optiver’s Chicago office trades a wide range of products from listed derivatives to cash equities, ETFs, bonds and foreign exchange.

What you’ll do:

It’s called an internship, but that doesn’t quite do it justice. As a hardware engineering intern at Optiver, your fingerprints will be on every aspect of the FPGA development process—from researching new low-latency techniques to designing cutting-edge hardware to mastering trading strategies and software. The results of your work will be visible every day in the form of strategies with nanosecond response times, highly parallelized algorithms and customized low-level networking.

Engineering systems at Optiver:

Engineering is at the core of our trading strategies. Trading is a complex and unpredictable environment which requires our systems to be fast, reliable and precise. Our engineers analyze hundreds of terabytes of data, enabling us to automatically price diverse sets of financial instruments with extremely low error tolerance. Our infrastructure is a combination of 10,000 highly customized components and 600 different applications, which run on 1,500 servers distributed globally. We deal with 14,000 releases and 35,000 changes per year.

Who you are:

• Working towards a BS or MS in Computer Science, or related technical field
• Graduating between December 2023 and June 2024
• Experience designing FPGAs in VHDL or Verilog
• Knowledge of digital simulators and self-checking test benches a plus
• Ability to communicate and collaborate with developers, traders, and business operations on a daily basis
• Legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required; we will not sponsor individuals for employment authorization for this job opening

What you’ll get:

• Highly-competitive internship compensation package
• Optiver-covered flights, living accommodations and commuting stipends (where applicable)
• Various office perks, including breakfast, lunch, and snacks 
• Social events, clubs and much more!

*We accept one application per role per year. If you have previously applied to the Hardware Engineering Intern position during this season and have been unsuccessful, you can reapply once the next recruitment season begins in 2023.