Graduate Operations Analyst (2023 Start - Chicago)

Who we are:

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:

Our Back Office Engineering and Operations team is seeking an Operations Analyst to join our Chicago office. As a member of this team, you’ll be responsible for the infrastructure that records and reconciles our trades and positions, ensuring these systems are functioning to the highest performance and reliability to allow trading to operate with confidence. Sitting in the middle of our dynamic trading floor, you will have constant face-to-face interaction with end-users such as our Traders, Researchers and Developers. As part of our core business, you will make a real, direct impact on our ability to trade and our trading results.

• Prepare all daily, intraday, and monthly reconciliations and address any exceptions
• Use scripts and queries to research and analyze reconciliation issues on daily and monthly intervals
• Identify, resolve and analyze differences in PnL
• Develop fluency with existing systems, infrastructure, and procedures and proactively improve them
• Identify opportunities to intelligently automate while maintaining firm human control
• Gather and analyze metrics to improve and report on the performance and efficiency of back office systems
• Work in tandem with back office engineering to ensure the health and stability of the back office processes and systems
• Continually drive systems toward cleanliness, simplicity, and reliability
• Create documentation to ensure processes and tasks are consistent and repeatable as well as increase knowledge sharing across the back office team

Who you are:

• Graduating with a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree
• Have an expected graduation date between December 2022 and June 2023 (Spring and Fall 2023 start dates available)
• Have the ability to proactively identify both technical and operational deficiencies
• Can automate and improve processes by learning and applying technical tools such as Excel, VBA, Scripting, or SQL
• Have a strong attention to detail
• Experience with balancing, trade reconciliation or experience in a trade settlement role is a plus, but not required.

What you’ll get:

• Work alongside best-in-class professionals from over 40 different countries.
• Performance based bonus structure that is unmatched anywhere in the industry. We combine our profits across desks, teams and offices into a global profit pool fostering a truly collaborative environment to work in.
• Ownership over initiatives that directly solve business problems.  

Alongside this you will get great other benefits such as 25 paid vacation days and market holidays, fully paid commuting expenses and health insurance, daily breakfast and lunch, training opportunities, 401(k) match up to 50% and charitable match opportunities, regular social events and clubs, and many more.

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