Algorithmic Trading C++ Engineer - Equities

Who We Are

Optiver is a global market maker founded in Amsterdam, with offices in London, Chicago, Austin, New York, Sydney, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and Mumbai. Established in 1986, today we are a leading liquidity provider, with close to 2,000 employees in offices around the world, united in our commitment to improve the market through competitive pricing, execution and risk management. By providing liquidity on multiple exchanges across the world in various financial instruments we participate in the safeguarding of healthy and efficient markets. 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.

Optiver’s Sydney office is one of the primary players within Asian markets, trading a range of products. Established in 1996, we're an active participant on the Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan exchanges, and act as Optiver’s APAC head office. 

What You’ll Do

Optiver is looking for experienced C++ engineers who are interested in working on our industry-leading, globally distributed, low-latency equities market making platform. This role is tightly integrated with trading and quant research teams, offering new hires a fast path to understanding the business and having an immediate impact. You will be responsible for working with equities traders to understand exactly how we want to trade on equities exchanges, partnering to refine trading algorithms to meet strict software performance demands, then owning your software through implementation and deployment into worldwide markets. From Sydney, you’ll work with live trading systems trading Asian markets with unique market microstructures. You’ll also contribute to a global equities trading platform expanding in Europe and the USA - without needing to work US/Europe market hours.

Our success trading equities worldwide depends on a scalable, performant, and well-engineered software stack, so our engineers are skilled in architecting systems that operate across globally distributed environments, while still delivering real-time performance.

You will:

• Work day-to-day with traders and quant researchers to understand how we want to price, quote and execute in equities markets and apply your skills to designing software systems and high-performance trading logic to bring those ideas to life in live equities markets.

• Collaborate with other software engineers and contribute to the architecture of our globally distributed equities trading platform with hard real-time performance constraints.

• Experience the excitement of our fast-paced development cycle – owning a tight feedback loop, testing and shipping your code to production sometimes on the same day.

• Flex your low-level engineering fundamentals by implementing performance-sensitive low-latency trading logic and strategies.

Who You Are

We’re looking for multiple engineers across a range of seniority and will tailor scope and ownership accordingly. We’re looking for candidates:

• With at least 2 years' experience as a software engineer working with distributed systems, low-latency systems, backend systems or client/server architectures.

• Who are skilled at object-oriented programming in C++, or Java/C# with a strong desire to work in C++.

• Who have an excellent understanding of computer science fundamentals like operating systems, data structures and algorithms.

• Who are familiar with a language like Python for developing tooling. 

• Who embrace AI tools for parts of their role, without sacrificing code quality or runtime performance.

• Who are excited by technically challenging problems.

If any of these describe you, we’re even more excited to talk to you:

• 5 or more years of experience as a software engineer on distributed or low-latency systems.

• Highly skilled in C++ development.

• Proficient with database technologies like Postgres for parameterisation, analytics, and research workflows.

• Experienced working in an electronic trading firm, or knowledge of equities trading fundamentals.

• Experienced working in a backtest-driven software development cycle.

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 some of the most complex problems in the financial markets.

In return for your expertise, you will have access to a range of Optiver perks, including:

• A performance-based bonus structure unmatched anywhere in the industry. We combine our profits across desks, teams and offices into a global profit pool, fostering a truly collaborative environment.

• The chance to work alongside diverse and intelligent peers in a rewarding environment.

• Training, mentorship and personal development opportunities.

• Daily breakfast, lunch and an in-house barista.

• Gym membership plus weekly in-house chair massages.

• Regular social events, including a company trip every two years.

• Guided relocation, a competitive relocation package and visa sponsorship where necessary.

Optiver is committed to diversity and inclusion. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, and welcome requests for reasonable adjustments during the process.

Questions? Get in touch with the recruitment team at [email protected]