Start dates available for mid-2023 and Feb 2024

Join Optiver to accelerate your growth in one of the most fascinating and dynamic industries. 

As a Graduate Quantitative Researcher, you’ll kickstart the first four weeks of your training program in our head office in Amsterdam, alongside global peers. Then, you'll return to Sydney and join one of our Research teams, where you’ll put your knowledge into practice and work on entrepreneurial projects that create an immediate impact.

Ready for the opportunity of a lifetime? Apply now.

WHO WE ARE

Optiver is a tech-driven trading firm and leading global market maker. For over 35 years, Optiver has been improving financial markets around the world, making them more transparent and efficient for all participants. With more than 1,600 employees in offices around the world, we’re united in our commitment to improve the market through competitive pricing, execution and thorough risk management. By providing liquidity on multiple exchanges across the world, we actively trade on 70+ exchanges, where we’re trusted to always provide accurate buy and sell pricing – no matter the market conditions.

Optiver’s Sydney office is one of the primary players within Asian markets, trading a range of products. Established in 1996, we're an active participant on the Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan exchanges, and act as Optiver’s APAC head office. 

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Know nothing about trading or financial markets? Don't worry, you bring the passion and we'll bring the training to support you along the way.

As our Graduate Quantitative Researcher, you'll work on critical projects that help us improve global financial markets. You’ll be constantly applying your top-tier analytical abilities to create insights and proposals that drive impactful and innovative trading strategies.

Every day will present you with new and interesting challenges to solve. And it’s up to you and your team to drive our success by ensuring that our quantitative models remain at the cutting-edge of constantly evolving capital markets.

WHO YOU ARE

You’re an inquisitive, critical thinker who is creative in innovating new solutions. You're constantly keen to understand the “why” and you're a strong believer in the power of collaborative problem solving. In addition, you:

• Are pragmatic and focused on outcomes.
• Can communicate technical concepts well.
• Enjoy utilising technology, programming or maths in your daily life to solve problems.
• Possess programming experience in any language (C, C++, Python, Basic, JAVA, etc.).

We offer a range of opportunities in our Research team. In the application, select the role that appeals to you the most, and we'll work with you in the recruitment process to ensure the role is most suitable for you. Below are examples of the different roles available.

• Performance and Strategy Researchers

Whether you join as the Performance or Strategy Researcher internship, you’ll develop and test hypotheses experimentally, under real-world conditions and constraints, to drive improvements in our trading systems.

As a Performance Researcher, you’ll be using data science, reverse engineering, and computing fundamentals to improve the success of our trading systems. You could be building tools to optimise our low-latency strategies, utilising custom built FPGA hardware, or analysing terabytes of systems and network capture data to process and discover hidden patterns.

As a Strategy Researcher, you’ll be leveraging our understanding of execution success and pricing to design and improve automated trading strategies. The scope of projects you’ll work on is broad, ranging from optimising strategy parameters, to examining market data and finding new hidden market opportunities, to developing new strategies that capture these opportunities.

Check out Rob’s ‘Day in the life’ feature to learn more.

• D1 Researcher

As a D1 Researcher, you’ll collaborate with traders and developers to build live trading strategies, using cutting-edge statistical and machine learning algorithms. You’ll build trading signals from market or fundamental data, combine signals and optimise strategy parameters through our state-of-the-art back testing infrastructure.

Whilst you'll use a mix of statistics, computer science and economics in your research, there are no textbook solutions to what you aim to solve. Instead, you’re driven to go beyond theory and search for hidden signals to help you create profitable strategies.

Check out Dom's 'Day in the life' feature to learn more.

• Options Pricing Research

As an Options Pricing Researcher, you’ll be responsible for the creation and improvement of our underlying pricing models, as well as increasing our statistical understanding of the underlying dynamics that impact the market.

You’ll work with traders to create and improve volatility surfaces, yield curves, and other quantitative elements in our automated trading systems. You’ll find creative solutions to real world problems, test those solutions with historical parameters and market data, and then implement these changes in our trading system to improve our ability to improve global financial markets.

Check out Noah’s ‘Day in the life’ feature to learn more.

ELIGIBILITY

• A final-year undergraduate, Honours, Masters or PhD student or a recent graduate (up to 4 years)
• Studying a highly quantitative or technically focused degree, such as Maths, Statistics, Physics, Elec / Mechatronic / Software Engineering, Computer Science, Applied/Quantitative Finance or Econometrics.
• An Australian or New Zealand Citizen, Australian Permanent Resident or able to secure full working rights after graduating.

WHAT YOU’LL GET

• The chance to work alongside diverse and intelligent peers in a rewarding environment
• Competitive remuneration, including an attractive bonus structure and additional leave entitlements
• Training, mentorship and personal development opportunities
• Gym membership plus weekly in-house chair massages
• Daily breakfast, lunch and an in-house barista
• Regular social events including an annual company trip
• A work-from-home allowance and support
• Guided relocation and a competitive relocation package

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.

Does this sound like the future you’re looking for? Take up the challenge and apply today!
If you have any questions regarding this opportunity, please contact us at [email protected].