Career Kickstarter: Trading is an immersive five-day program at Optiver’s Amsterdam office, offering final-year students at European Universities a direct pathway to a career in trading. Over the course of one week, you’ll build your understanding of trading through theory, realistic simulations and exposure to Optiver’s trading floor. Through a blend of interactive lectures, trading games, and expert mentorship, you’ll learn how to think and act like a trader.
Career Kickstarter
From five-day program to full-time offer
Career Kickstarter is a five-day program designed for STEM students and recent graduates ready to take the next step. This isn’t just an introduction to the industry. It’s a hands-on opportunity built around real challenges in trading, research, and technology. Led by Optiver’s full-time education team, it gives you the chance to work through complex problems, collaborate with others, and sharpen your thinking through continuous feedback. The program is built to identify strong performers for the roles behind each track, and those who stand out may receive a full-time offer at the end of the week.
Currently open programs
Understanding the power of diverse perspectives, we’ve created the Career Kickstarter: Women in Tech, designed to empower and transition aspiring female-identifying engineers into an impactful engineering career. In this five-day program, you’ll gain hands-on experience, collaborate with some of the industry’s leading engineers, and develop the critical technical skills necessary to thrive in a high-performance environment. You’ll also get an introduction to the trading concepts that matter from an engineering perspective, so no prior knowledge of trading or financial markets is required.
Career Kickstarter: Tech is a five-day, all-expenses-paid program designed for students eager to explore the engineering challenges of building mission-critical trading systems that keep global markets moving. Hosted at our Amsterdam headquarters, you’ll work through hands-on coding sessions, system design workshops and a collaborative engineering project that mirrors the work of our engineers. You’ll also get an introduction to the trading concepts that matter from an engineering perspective, so no prior knowledge of trading or financial markets is required.
A closer look at each track
Technology
Pathway to a Software EngineerTake on an engineering challenge shaped by the demands of real-world trading systems. You’ll build context in trading, system design and core technical concepts, then apply them in team-based project work. Throughout the week, you’ll design, build, test and iterate on a solution with performance, reliability and low-latency execution in mind. Trainers act as team leads, guiding your team’s approach, challenging your reasoning and giving feedback as you work through technical trade-offs.
Trading
Pathway to a TraderWork through the types of decisions traders make in fast-moving markets. Through trading games, open outcry sessions and decision-making exercises, you’ll practise pricing with incomplete information, responding to market flow, managing risk and adjusting your decisions as new signals come in. The track focuses on building judgment through repeated application, feedback and exposure to how traders process information, manage risk and respond in real time.
Quantitative Research
Pathway to a ResearcherWork through the types of problems quantitative researchers tackle in trading. Through interactive lectures, hands-on workshops and bespoke data projects, you’ll see how trading ideas are explored, assumptions are tested and models are used to improve decision-making. Using large datasets drawn from real-world financial markets, you’ll apply mathematical modelling, algorithm design, statistics and experimentation to turn complex information into useful signals.
Spend five days exploring what a future at Optiver could look like.
Career Kickstarter gives you the chance to spend time with like-minded peers, explore the city, and meet the people behind the systems and strategies. You’ll get a feel for the office beyond the classroom setting, through shared meals, socials, and a tour of the trading floor. It is not just about learning about the work. It is also a chance to get to know the people around it and build a clearer sense of whether it feels like the right fit for you. Because the experience is all-expenses-paid, you can focus on the week itself: learning, connecting, and thinking about what comes next.
Start your application
Career Kickstarter - Trading 2027
Amsterdam
Early CareersTradingEarly CareersTrading- Early CareersEventsEarly CareersEvents
- Early CareersTechnologyEarly CareersTechnology
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