Graduates

All graduates begin with a 12-week program at the Global Optiver Academy in Amsterdam, training alongside peers from across our offices. Led by our dedicated in-house education team, consisting of former traders and engineers, you’ll learn how Optiver’s trading, research and technology systems operate in practice. Through a combination of core trading fundamentals and hands-on application, you'll build context early before moving into your role. After the academy, you’ll continue building on this knowledge within your local team, applying what you’ve learnt to the systems and problems you’ll be working on day to day.

Trading requires fast decisions in real markets, so you start building your understanding of the markets early. You’ll begin with the fundamentals, learning options theory and how markets function in practice. Then, you'll apply what you've learnt through simulated trading using real-time market data. You’ll develop and test strategies in the same setup used across the firm. As you progress, the focus shifts to decision-making. You’ll continue to test strategies, learn to adjust based on outcomes, and build intuition for how markets move and how to respond. By the time you join your desk, you’ll be prepared and ready to trade, with support from your team.

You’ll work on real systems early, so the training is designed to give you the context and access to do that. Your first few weeks will focus on understanding how Optiver’s trading systems actually work. That includes the fundamentals of trading, how data flows through our systems, and how engineers, traders, and researchers use them in practice. Using the same tools and platforms used in production, you'll learn directly from engineers and traders across the firm, alongside your global cohort, and gain early exposure to how your work connects to real-time trading decisions. As you progress, the focus shifts toward your role. You’ll go deeper into the systems, infrastructure, and components you’ll be working on, so you can start contributing with context from day one.