Graduate Software Engineer (2024 Start - Chicago)

Optiver Software Engineers build proprietary trading systems which the firm uses to navigate financial markets. Working collaboratively across business units, our engineering teams continually solve the most complex challenges and design, develop, and maintain our proprietary trading systems.

Our trading strategies must respond to market events in microseconds or less, and we automatically price large, diverse sets of financial instruments with extremely low error tolerance. We continually refine, store, and analyze terabytes of data produced by market activity and our trading systems. Our user interfaces must present coherent, responsive real-time visualizations of market activity and system performance while providing intuitive control of a highly complex system. Our core systems must provide a stable, performant, and trusted foundation on which our systems are built.

Who we are:

At Optiver, our mission is to constantly improve the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency and acting as a stabilizing 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. We tackle the toughest problems, challenge the status quo and always aim for excellence. As one of the largest market making institutions, we are a trusted partner of 70+ exchanges across the globe.

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:

• Design, develop, support, and maintain trading systems, tools, and infrastructure
• Collaborate deeply with traders, risk analysts, researchers, and other engineers
• Gain and develop an in-depth understanding of trading theory and practice

Who you are:

• Student graduating with a degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering between December 2023 and June 2024
• Someone with strong engineering instincts and a deep understanding of computer science fundamentals
• Experienced in writing software in C++, C#, C, and/or Java
• Passionate for clean code, simple well-architected systems, and continuous improvement
• Able to collaborate with developers, traders, and business operations

Please note: Previous knowledge of the financial industry is not required. Optiver provides a prestigious training program where you’ll learn everything you need to know.

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.  

Additionally, you’ll get great other benefits such as 25 paid vacation days and market holidays, fully paid 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 this season and have been unsuccessful, you can reapply once the next recruitment season begins in 2024.