As our Quantitative Trading Intern, you’ll spend your summer or winter break tackling complex, quantitative problems at one of the world’s leading tech-driven trading firms. Under the guidance and mentorship of industry experts, you’ll apply your strong reasoning skills to design, develop and enhance our innovative trading strategies, fully immersing in the world of market making.  

From derivative theory training to hands-on trading experience, you’ll have deepened your understanding of the quantitative trading industry by the end of the 8-week internship. Plus, if you’ve excelled over the summer, you’ll receive an offer to return as a Graduate Quantitative Trader.

Note: Part of the internship program will be run out of our Sydney office. Optiver will cover your travel and accommodation costs for the duration of the program.

What you’ll do

Requiring a pragmatic mindset, logical problem-solving skills and mathematical precision, our internship is as close as you can get to a real trading experience. Led by our dedicated in-house education team that consists of ex-traders and engineers, our Quantitative Trading Internship offers you the opportunity to:

• Complete our curated series of lectures and coursework on trading fundamentals, covering topics such as options pricing, financial markets, trading strategies and cutting-edge technology.
• Apply your recently acquired knowledge in a simulated trading environment, trading options using live market data for a realistic hands-on experience.
• Analyse real historical data to develop your own algorithmic trading strategy and backtest to see how it performed.
• Learn directly from our team of full-time educators and current traders, gaining exposure to our various trading desks and experience the financial markets first-hand.
• Test your potential and accelerate your growth in a fascinating and high-performing environment.

Read Brent’s story to discover what it’s like to join Optiver as a quantitative trading intern.

What you’ll get

You’ll join a culture of collaboration and excellence, where you’ll be surrounded by curious thinkers and creative problem solvers. Driven by a passion for continuous improvement, you’ll thrive in a supportive, high-performing environment alongside talented colleagues, working collectively to tackle the most complex problems in the financial markets.

In addition, you’ll receive:

• A highly competitive remuneration package, including an attractive bonus structure and additional leave entitlements.
• Optiver-covered flights and accommodations for the duration of the internship
• Training, mentorship and personal development opportunities
• Daily breakfast, lunch and in-house barista
• Regular social events

Who you are

• Penultimate or pre-penultimate university student, graduating in 2026 or later
• A Taiwan Citizen, Taiwan Permanent Resident, or has a preference to work in Taiwan long term post-graduation
• Lateral thinker, with a passion for quantitative problems and working in collaborative, dynamic environments.
• Holds superior quantitative and logical reasoning skills.
• Interested in strategic games and/or competitive activities.
• Experienced in programming or scripting in Python a plus.
• May have an interest in trading or financial markets.

Diversity statement 

Optiver is committed to diversity and inclusion.

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. Please let us know if you would like to request any reasonable adjustments by contacting the Recruitment team via [email protected].  

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 re-apply when the next recruitment season begins.