Optiver
Software Developer Internship
Leading global electronic market maker committed to improving the world’s financial markets
Software engineering
Intern
Office | Sydney, NSW, Australia
Visa sponsorship · No
Entry Level · A role for someone with underlying potential, good motivation and ability to learn. Typically no direct experience is required.
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Why Optiver
Create better access and prices for all – that’s our goal for financial markets the world over. As a leading global electronic market maker, we are dedicated to our mission of continuously improving the market. It’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly. It’s the driving force behind our business. Even in times of extreme volatility, we stay the course. Resolute in our belief that the market should always be liquid for economies to thrive.
As one of the oldest market-making institutions, we’re a trusted partner of exchanges. Our contribution to them ensures they remain stable, transparent and competitive. We provide liquidity to financial markets using our own capital, at our own risk, trading a wide range of products: listed derivatives, cash equities, ETFs, bonds, and foreign currencies.
We strongly believe in the positive power of the world’s markets. That’s why we’re committed to leading the way in market making for environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) products.
Optiver is a global company with offices in Amsterdam, Sydney, Chicago, Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai, London and Singapore.
About the role
As a Software Developer Intern at Optiver, you’ll work alongside experienced engineers to develop innovative solutions that enable us to respond to the financial markets at lightning-fast speeds. In just a few weeks, you could develop latency-critical applications that contribute towards our trading success.
By the end of the 10-week internship, you’ll have deepened your understanding of how technology is used in the quantitative trading industry. Plus, if you’ve excelled over the summer, you’ll receive an offer to return as a Graduate Software Developer.
What you’ll do Led by our in-house education team that consists of ex-traders and engineers, you’ll delve into advanced engineering concepts and lead innovative projects, during our world-class training program. Whether it's developing ultra-low latency exchange protocol encoders and decoders, or fine-tuning our automated trading strategies and pricing models, you’ll work closely with traders and other engineers to build simple, well-architected solutions that meet the needs of our business.
You’ll experience the excitement of a fast-paced development cycle – owning a tight feedback loop, testing and shipping your code to production. You could be working on a change to a trading system in the morning and see it run live by the afternoon. No two days are the same, and it’s up to you and your team to drive our success in the ever-evolving capital markets.
Aside from technical skills, our dedicated education team will also work with you on your development, including:
- Workshops on a variety of tech-based topics, along with soft skills to support your holistic growth as a developer.
- A dedicated mentor who will guide you through our development process and how our trading systems work.
- Trader training to get you up to speed on our business. This helps you understand the fundamentals of trading, enabling you to make an impact from the early stages of your Optiver career.
Find your niche in technology **We offer a range of opportunities in our technology teams. **Discover the exciting projects that you could work on during your internship.
- Read Nicole's story on working in our Statistical and Index Arbitrage team to develop position-taking strategies that predict price moves.
- Read Brenda’s story on delivering low-latency, high-throughput systems that improve our connectivity to the financial market.
- Read Richard’s story on navigating the world of automated trading – systems that make trading decisions.
- Read Marcus’ story on working in the risk and treasury team, where he monitors systems that manage and mitigate risk (e.g. trading risk).
- Read Lena’s story on production engineering, where they build tools and systems that enable us to trade smoothly.
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.
- Optiver-covered flights and accommodation for the duration of the internship.
- The opportunity to work alongside best-in-class professionals.
- Training, mentorship and personal development opportunities.
- Gym membership, plus weekly in-house chair massages.
- Daily breakfast, lunch and in-house barista.
- Regular social events.
Who you are
- A penultimate university student.
- An Australian or New Zealand Citizen, Australian Permanent Resident or able to provide evidence of full working rights.
- Studying a Computer Science, Software/Electrical/Mechatronic Engineering or similarly technical degree.
- Problem solver who will enjoy building high-performing, low latency designs that critically impact trading success.
- Curious to learn and comfortable exploring complex technical ideas.
- Have a range of out-of-classroom projects or extra-curricular activities that demonstrates your passion in technology, particularly software development.
- Excited to work alongside the best developers and traders in the industry, with the humility to continually upskill and improve yourself.
- Knowledgeable about object-orientated design and development concepts (experience with C++, Java or Python is required for our technical assessment).
What you'll be responsible for
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Testing and QA
Ensure high quality work by testing code meets the requirements
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Backend application development
Develop, test, and maintain software applications
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Frontend Application Development
Develop, test, and maintain the user-side elements of a website or app
Skills you'll need
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Collaboration
Works with others by being open, clear in communication and listening to achieve goals
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Numerical problem solving
Works with numerical information and performs mathematical calculations to solve problems
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Attention to detail
Accurately identifies and rectifies discrepancies or errors that exists in information and deliverables