The Trading Operations Engineering team is the steward of our trading systems, balancing a safe, orderly production environment with profitability and sustainable growth.

Our responsibility is to stay ahead of the inherent complexity in scaling a distributed system that handles over half a million correlated financial instruments across multiple data centers and thousands of servers – all the while striving for simplicity, dependability, and operational excellence. 

We understand the full breadth of all production systems, including how they interconnect and interact and use this knowledge to deploy, monitor, troubleshoot, and scale up our trading infrastructure. We work with traders, development teams and operations teams to coordinate and influence improvements to our systems. 

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 50+ 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.

As one of the world’s major financial centres, London was selected as the home of Optiver’s FX trading business, our UK-focused Institutional Trading Team and rapidly growing commodities trading arm. Optiver UK is located in a city that bridges European, Asian and American time zones, connecting our regional offices and embracing a truly global mindset. With more than 270 nationalities and 300 languages, London is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and is home to some of the best museums, a thriving international restaurant scene and bustling high streets that attract people from all over the globe.

What you’ll do:

• Deploy, monitor and configure a suite of proprietary trading applications
• Provide technical expertise/support to a high frequency trading floor in a competitive market-making environment
• Develop fluency with existing systems, infrastructure and procedures and proactively work to improve them
• Continually drive production systems toward cleanliness, simplicity and reliability
• Work with development to ensure the health and stability of the production trading environment
• Support optimal firm performance and hardware/software connection during rollout of new trading solutions or locations
• Intelligently automate while maintaining firm human control
• Script against configuration files, databases and logs

Who you are:

• A Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related technical field
• Experience with Python or similar scripting language
• Experience with SQL and data administration
• Experience with operating systems and understanding network architectures
• A decisive nature, engineering mindset and preference for simple clean solutions
• The ability to handle a dynamic trading floor with constant face-to-face interaction with end-users (traders, researchers and fellow engineers)
• Experience working on a broad range of projects that use various tools to best solve the problem at hand
• A client-focused, service-minded approach with a strong sense of urgency
• An ability to stay composed regardless of what is happening
• Interest in how hardware and software connects

What you’ll get:

At Optiver UK, you will be part of a well-established and high-performing global firm whilst experiencing the excitement that comes from a growing operation. As our London operations grow, the opportunity to make a global impact and take your career to a new level expands with it. We offer a supportive environment for you to perform at your best. Some of our key benefits include:

• Competitive remuneration
• 27 paid vacation days (plus UK public holidays)
• Daily onsite breakfast and lunch
• Paid commuting expenses (home to office)
• 50% paid gym subscription  
• Private medical insurance
• Pension scheme
• Training, conference attendance and continuous learning opportunities
• International transfer opportunities

How to apply:

Apply directly via the form below and please provide us with a CV and letter of motivation in English. Should there be a potential match, a member of our team will reach out sooner rather than later. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to [email protected].

When applying for a role with Optiver UK Limited, the recruitment process is run via our Optiver global recruitment team. The personal data you will submit as part of the recruitment process may be processed in the UK, US and the Netherlands. By continuing with your application you hereby consent to your personal data being processed in these locations. More information on how Optiver processes your personal data can be found in our Privacy Policy.

As an intentionally flat organisation, we believe that great ideas and impact can come from everyone. We are passionate about empowering individuals and creating diverse teams that thrive. Every person at Optiver should feel included, valued and respected, because we believe our best work is done together. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion is hardwired through every stage of our hiring process. We encourage applications from candidates from any and all backgrounds, and we welcome requests for reasonable adjustments during the process to ensure that you can best demonstrate your abilities.