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Vicky’s story

What first attracted you to join 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 because we develop products for use in-house, so you can have an idea and release it for use within the same day. The work environment has also given me a great opportunity 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.

What does your role entail?

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 to 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 dev, 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. 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 on 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.

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 love about your work?

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, to 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 autotrader 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 lack of mentorship and learning support, and that certainly doesn’t go away as you move into your second year and beyond.

What’s your advice to potential applicants?

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 to 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!

Brenda
Graduate Software Developer
Brenda is originally from Sydney, but moved to Canberra in order to study a double degree in Advanced Computing (R&D) (Hon) and Actuarial Studies at ANU. After a semester, she found her passion in computing and was certain that she wanted to do Computer Science so dropped out of Actuarial Studies. From there, she did a range of research projects and other work in a variety of interesting fields such as compilers, memory management, signal processing and computer vision.

What made you choose a career as a software developer?

In high school, I loved mathematics – particularly the problem-solving aspect of mathematics. I tried out a programming class in university, and fell in love with all the interesting and challenging problems that could be solved. I also loved the creative aspect of developing solutions to problems as there is no single best method or solution for every problem out there.

What first attracted you to Optiver?

I didn’t really know much about Optiver or finance when I first applied. But throughout my internship, I really enjoyed working on the problems and challenges at Optiver, and working with all the amazingly bright people around me.

What does your role entail?

I work in common execution which is a core team that oversees all common products that execute into the various exchanges that we trade. At the start of a project, I’ll mostly be in meetings – discussing, planning and designing efficient, scalable and modular solutions for the particular problem. Most of my development work is in C++, with a sprinkle of Python for latency insensitive tasks or for data analysis. Furthermore, a lot of time is also spent on verifying that our products work, as intended by thoroughly testing our stack and ensuring mechanisms are in place so we can efficiently rollback and operate if something does go wrong.

What key skills are required?

Whilst technical knowledge is important, communication and project management are crucial. No matter which team you end up on, you’ll be interacting and collaborating with a variety of other teams, both technical and non-technical. Knowing how to work efficiently with them, and manage their needs and expectations is important to developing great solutions.

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

One project that I’ve been working on is the rookie environment. In this project, I worked with a team to upgrade the stack that we train the rookie traders on, including the exchange simulator, so that it would better mirror production. Another project I worked on was upgrading our existing order safety system, which we use in case of emergencies to remove ourselves from the market in a quick, efficient, and safe manner.

How do you start your day at Optiver?

I start my day with coffee in the morning from our amazing in-house barista. From there, I check slack and my emails. Then I check that everything is running as normal and there are no problems. At 9:30am, my team has a short stand up where we catch up with our projects. Afterwards, I head upstairs for brekkie and officially start my day 😊.

What do you love about your work?

I love that there are plenty of interesting, dynamic, and challenging problems at Optiver and you’ll never be bored of whatever you are working on. You also get a lot of ownership of the work that you do, and you really feel like you are making a meaningful and impactful contribution at work.

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

Whilst I do enjoy programming as a hobby and love my data science and enjoy scripting things on the side, I think a good work life balance is important so it’s perfectly fine to keep a distinction between work and your hobbies.

What’s your advice to potential applicants?

No one is across everything and we don’t expect you to know everything when you join. Every day you learn something new at Optiver. Showing that you can learn and improve from your mistakes, and reflect on your past experiences is far more important than knowing everything at a glance!

Marcus
Graduate Software Developer

What first attracted you to Optiver?

I knew about Optiver from a guest lecture at University. I was impressed by the interesting things they presented during that guest lecture. Especially the part how they put effort in reducing latency of the system and how much impact it has by simply choosing the correct data structure. Seeing the knowledge I learnt from Uni being used in a complexed system and having huge impact, got me excited about the trading industry.

I got the chance to know Optiver better through the interview process. It was one of the best designed interviews I had. I really liked the introduction session in between the behaviour and the technical interview. It gave me the chance to talk to new starters, who were grads a few months ago, and know Optiver from their eyes. But my favourite part was the technical design interview. It was challenging, but it felt more like an opportunity to work with senior developers from Optiver and come up with a solution together. We were having discussions about the solution I proposed and where possible im

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