Optiver

What attracted you to apply for Optiver?

I didn’t know about HFT as a career path until a friend of mine got the opportunity to intern at Optiver. The internship seemed super fun, and the style of work struck me as extremely hands on. The environment is really unique in this industry, you have a high level of responsibility on interesting technical projects that are largely unblocked by red tape. This is largely because we are developing products for use entirely in house, so you can have an idea and release it for use within the same day. The work environment here has been a great opportunity for me to hit the ground running and grow quickly in a wide variety of domains.

What did you study, and how is it relevant to your role at Optiver?

I studied computer science with a heavy focus on software engineering. It was quite a good baseline for my role here, both with the fundamental technical skills, and the soft skills around learning quickly and collaborating. You don’t need to come as an expert, the culture here is for us to learn on the job. I had no background in our programming languages (C++ mostly and some Python among others), let alone a background in finance. My technical skills as well had plenty to be desired.

Do you have interests outside of work that help you in your role?

Work life balance is important! My hobbies aren’t technical, but they are priorities to me. At the moment, I’m doing plenty of running and playing lots of poker 😊.

What do you do in your role?

I am a developer in our Statistical and Index Arbitrage team. This team works on our position-taking strategies that use macro-economic trends to predict price moves. This is different from the standard Optiver trading loop, where the focus is on making good decisions, as quickly as possible. Building a system like this requires a close collaboration of development, research, and trading know how, so I get to learn lots about these areas in my work with these tribes.

What are some of the projects you are working on (non-confidential)?

We wear lots of different hats here, and I do a fair amount of work in our production environment to deploy new products and improve existing ones for my team. I’m also doing some projects in our backtest/research pipeline. This is the environment our researchers and traders use to test and iterate on strategies. These two areas touch a wide variety of technical domains, and almost every aspect of these domains, was foreign to me before joining as a graduate.

What are some of the key skills required for your role?

I think the soft skills are key. Optiver is a highly collaborative environment, so things like communication and project management are at the forefront. And as well, this is an environment where you will encounter things you don’t understand every day. Having the mindset to ask for help and continue learning and tackling these challenges is important. The technical skills come with time and are important as well, and they help you deliver quality projects in a timely manner.

What’s your favorite part of the job?

One of the best parts, I’d say, is the release of a big project. We are often responsible for the full development cycle of a project, from planning, designing, testing, and deploying. Achieving all of that is always a satisfying feeling, and the culture here is pretty big on recognizing and appreciating achievements when they happen. I also like being able to look back on my previous projects, I find it encouraging to see my growth and increased capabilities from the last years of effort put in.

How were you supported to learn during your graduate program?

The learning environment here has been a highlight of my experience. Starting out, I got to benefit from the education team who took me through my introduction courses to both options trading and C++. We learned through lectures as well as through hands on means, such as doing trading games against each other and competing in an auto trader building competition. When I was placed into my dev team, I received lots of direct mentorship and was given projects that built in complexity over time as I became capable of more. There is no lacking in mentorship and learning support, and that certainly doesn’t go away as you move into your second year and beyond.

If you had one piece of advice for those that are looking to apply, what would it be?

Give it a go for sure. I think the application process goes both ways, and it’s a good opportunity to talk to employees here and figure out if Optiver is the right place for you. I’d recommend you ask lots of questions, and don’t worry if you feel like you don’t know everything up front: I didn’t and still do not!

What did you study and how is it relevant to your role at Optiver?

I studied Chemistry at the University of Sydney, which was a great background to have as I knew the chemical symbols when we start trading new metals.

Jokes aside, while the content itself wasn’t relevant to my role, the skills that I learnt (such as problem solving, logical reasoning, critical thinking and an analytical and scientific approach) definitely are.

What attracted you to apply for Optiver?

I was attracted by the opportunity to solve interesting problems in a fast-paced environment, the chance to have an impact early on, the informal yet collaborative working culture and learning about a different field to what I studied.

What do you do in your role?

In risk, we’re responsible for the market, credit and automated trading risks of Optiver. As part of my role, I’m involved in monitoring and assessing these risks, reviewing current risk frameworks, and developing new or improved frameworks to cover different risks. We work closely with:

• Trading to expand into new business initiatives while maintaining a healthy risk appetite
• Tech to develop new tooling to monitor and analyze risks, and we
• Provide opinions to senior risk stakeholders and management on any limit requests or new products or strategies.

To put it in a more relatable context, imagine you’re the organier for a big ticketed event with live music, food trucks and carnival games. A market risk could be that you don’t sell enough tickets to the event, or you sell them too cheaply to cover all your costs. A credit risk could be that you pay deposits to secure the band, but they don’t show up and never pay you back. An automated risk could be that you accidentally sell the tickets for $1 instead of $10 due to a typo.

The role will analyse those risks and put limits and controls in place so that even if something happens, you can still throw another party next year, learning from any mistakes. We will work closely with the event planner (Trading) and IT to develop these controls.

Imagine then that you want to expand and throw an additional party over Halloween. We will then analyse whether the frameworks that are in place for a normal party are applicable to a Halloween party. Perhaps we need additional considerations, such as the competitiveness of Halloween parties. We will share all of these opinions with senior stakeholders for their approval, ranging from a senior risk manager to the CEO.

What are some of the projects you are working on (non-confidential)?

Trading are looking to expand the products we trade. As a result I’ve been reviewing our limit framework around these risks to ensure that they are appropriate and within appetite, and not introducing any unintended risks. We are also expanding into a range of new markets and I’m advising what needs to be done to maintain our risk controls.

Both of these projects require collaboration across a range of teams, making clear communication very important, as well as a critical mindset to consider the risks and come up with creative solutions. These kinds of projects aren’t only given to more senior team members, grads will also work on projects that would have immediate business impact.

What are some of the key skills required for your role?

Critical thinking, logical reasoning, and a strong sense of curiosity, drive, and self-reflection. It is also important to have strong communication skills, confidence to challenge others, as well as be comfortable with being challenged.

What’s your favourite part of the job?

Working on a wide range of interesting problems with smart people, in an informal and approachable environment.

How were you supported to learn during your graduate program?

I started as a trading graduate at Optiver. For the first 12 weeks, the education team took us through the theory and application of the theory in simulated trading, with support from traders . Then I spent 3 months on the trading floor with a mentor who taught and challenged my thinking. From there, I moved into risk, where I was supported by another mentor, but also given space to learn for myself.

If you had one piece of advice for current students, what would it be?

Risk is a fun and dynamic role that requires a whole range of skills and an interest in financial markets. During the application process, share your passions, hobbies, and interests, and think about the skills you’ve gained from them that relate to the role. Be open and honest, you don’t want to end up in a role that isn’t right for your strengths!

What attracted you to apply to Optiver?

In high-frequency trading, the competitive market means the problems you solve can’t stay the same – they keep getting harder, and you have to keep challenging yourself. I find this incredibly motivating, and the team at Optiver is so open and collaborative – it’s the best environment to solve hard problems in!

What team do you work in and what are they responsible for?

I’m in the Performance Research team, which focus on execution, speed and success. Identifying profitable trades to make is only one part of the process. Once that has happened, you have to execute. In order to execute the best, my team analyses and theorises about everything from low-level systems and networking protocols, up to higher-level trading algorithm strategy optimisations.

Describe your current role?

My current role is focused on statistically analysing the exchange system from a networking/OS level. I take an understanding of what all our trading systems are trying to accomplish, get really into the minutia of the networking data we’ve captured and theorise about what’s happening in this exchange “black box”. I’ll come up with experiments to test these theories, and if there are improvements, I’ll work with Traders and Developers to get the results into production.

What keeps you motivated?

The rush of those ‘eureka’ moments can be addictive - where everything clicks into place. It’s challenging, and sometimes it’s a long time between. But it’s all worth it when you get the satisfaction of really figuring something out.

What was your training like?

I’ve been here for over two years and I still feel like I’m in training (in a good way) – you will never know everything! When I joined, I had a lot of team support, help with dissecting what I found, and how that related to Optiver’s systems.

What do you love most about your role/Optiver?

Most? Now that’s a hard question. I love that I have the autonomy to focus on problems that I will have the most impact on. We’re all on the same team, and when people are able to do their best, Optiver does its best.

Do you have any tips for graduates going through the process?

Most importantly, apply! The worst way to miss a good trade is to not shoot for it! Secondly, not knowing everything is okay, take time to show what you are good at. Also, try to be concrete when talking about how you would approach a problem. The role is about taking large abstract problems, breaking them down, and actually doing the work to solve them. We want to see that you can break a problem down to the point where you can articulate the actions you will take to solve it.

What first attracted you to Optiver?

Optiver has a great reputation within the CSE community at my university and has a big campus presence as well. So when I found out they were hiring graduates for an operations role, I applied straight away!

What does your role entail?

My team is responsible for building the tooling and systems that enable our trading environment to run smoothly. This involves handling scheduling & orchestration, service discovery, configuration management, CI/CD, and the developer experience. We also take some time each week to do an incident response shift – this gives us a good feel for the pain points in the environment.

What key skills are required?

Apart from the technical skills (knowledge of a programming language, a familiarity with Linux and networking concepts etc.), I would say the biggest skills needed are creativity and an ability to work autonomously. The problems we solve on a day-to-day basis require you to come up with, test and iterate on solutions quickly. And as with almost any role – communication. Optiver has a flat structure and you’ll often be the one driving your own projects from start to finish – which means keeping stakeholders up to date on progress and working with others when the project branches outside your area of expertise. Communication is especially important for an incident response as you need to ensure everyone is aware of the impact of an incident, and that the right people have received the information required to resolve it.

What are some of the projects you are working on (non-confidential)?

My team and I have recently rolled out a new control system for managing applications in our environment that includes both a web interface as well as a command-line one. There has been a lot of positive feedback from users, and we are actively working on adding features and improving the user experience. I’ve also been working on streamlining our build and deployment process such that developers can spend less time waiting for their changes to be released into production.

How do you start your day at Optiver?

When I’m in the office I’ll usually start by making myself a cup of tea, and catching up on emails and messages before I jump into my daily stand-up meeting.

What do you love about your work?

I love the variety of the work I can pursue, as it keeps me from stagnating in my learning or getting bored – I’ve done everything from front end development to configuration management to writing C++ and architecting deployment solutions.

I’m also a huge fan of the self-driven nature of projects at Optiver. I get to prioritise what I think is most impactful. We also have a great system of writing up project proposals for the team’s consideration, which encourages everyone to contribute to the direction of the team.

What keeps you motivated?

I personally really enjoy releasing features to developers and traders, allowing them to use the environment in a better, more efficient way. They are always very grateful and give thorough and useful feedback.

Do you have interests outside of work that help you in your role?

I have some technical personal projects on the side that I will pick up now and then, but I think my hobbies of martial arts and bouldering are probably more useful in this regard! It can be easy to lose balance in your life when you work a desk job, so I like to make sure I’m keeping my body healthy as well as my mind.

What’s your advice to potential applicants?

Make sure you’re confident and motivated. Everyone I know at Optiver is always open to learning something new, can comfortably admit when they’re out of their depth and is excited to try new things and challenge themselves. I think this kind of attitude is what leads to success in the technical space because you don’t shy away from learning experiences!