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
We are looking for Support Engineers to join our APAC Risk, Treasury, and Post-Trade IT team in Sydney. Our team builds and runs the systems Optiver uses to measure and control its risk exposure, fund its trading, and process its trades after execution. When these systems encounter problems, Optiver's ability to trade safely is affected. Our users are the traders, risk managers and middle-office staff across our APAC offices who depend on these systems every day. Our platforms sit at the end of a chain of internal services, exchanges, brokers and clearers. You'll own their day-to-day operation and the investigation when something looks wrong. The symptom is often a wrong number rather than a stopped process.
Responsibilities:
Own day-to-day production support for the risk, treasury and post-trade platforms: investigate incidents from the first alert through to root cause, write and ship the straightforward fixes yourself, and escalate to the development team where deeper domain knowledge is needed.
Work with stakeholders to establish the real impact of an issue and keep them informed while you resolve it.
Drive problems to resolution even when the cause sits outside the team.
Reduce the support burden by automating manual workflows, removing recurring failure modes and improving alerting, monitoring and diagnostics.
Extend our AI-assisted operational tooling for triage, investigation and remediation.
Manage the technical operation of the production environment: capacity planning, process and host layout, and deployment across more than 1,000 application instances.
WHO YOU ARE
You have 2+ years operating and supporting production software systems, ideally where failure has direct financial or operational consequence.
You debug systematically, following a problem through logs, data and configuration to its root cause rather than its nearest workaround; you want to fix it in the code, not around it (ours is mostly C++).
You have strong Linux fundamentals and the confidence to investigate directly on the machine: processes, memory, file systems, networking.
You are fluent in a scripting language, most usefully Python, with the instinct to automate a task the second time you have to do it.
You are comfortable with data: competent SQL, and enough numerical curiosity to tell a wrong answer from a right one.
You are interested in AI and keen to leverage it in your day-to-day work, but you check its work.
You communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders under time pressure.
Additional experience we value:
A solid understanding of the trade lifecycle: clearing, settlement, margin, corporate actions, position and P&L reconciliation.
Experience with observability tooling, CI/CD pipelines and configuration management across a large estate.
Experience using LLM or agentic tooling to do operational work.
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:
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
DIVERSITY STATEMENT
Optiver is committed to diversity and inclusion, and it is hardwired through every stage of our hiring process. We encourage applications from candidates from any and all backgrounds, and we welcome requests for reasonable adjustments during the process to ensure that you can best demonstrate your abilities.
PRIVACY DISCLAIMER
Optiver takes the protection of your personal information seriously and is committed to keeping your personal information safe and confidential. For full details about how Optiver uses your personal information in our recruitment process, please see our Privacy Policy.
I give permission to Optiver to contact me by email about Optiver roles, company updates, recruitment activities, and events relevant to my career. If you would prefer that we do not retain your personal information for this purpose please let us know by emailing us at [email protected].
Skills Required
- 2+ years operating and supporting production software systems
- Systematic debugging of logs, data, configuration, and code
- Strong Linux fundamentals, including processes, memory, filesystems, and networking
- Fluency in a scripting language, preferably Python
- Competency with SQL and data analysis
- Interest in AI and ability to validate AI-generated work
- Clear communication with non-technical stakeholders under time pressure
- Understanding of trade lifecycle processes such as clearing, settlement, margin, corporate actions, and reconciliation
- Experience with observability tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and configuration management
- Experience using LLM or agentic tooling for operational work
Optiver Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Optiver and has not been reviewed or approved by Optiver.
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Career-Linked Recognition & Rewards — Pay is considered highly competitive in trading, quantitative, and engineering paths, with performance-linked bonuses materially elevating total earnings for strong contributors. High performers are described as seeing outsized upside when firm and team results are strong.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is depicted as comprehensive, including medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance, alongside HSA/FSA options and mental-health support. Some locations note unlimited therapy access through a partner platform.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — U.S. roles are often described as offering 25 days of paid vacation plus market holidays, alongside generous parental leave. This breadth of time off is highlighted as helping to offset a high-intensity environment.
Optiver Insights
What We Do
Optiver’s story began over 30 years ago, when we started business as a single trader on the floor of Amsterdam’s options exchange. Today, we are at the forefront of trading and technology as a leading global electronic market maker, focused on pricing, execution and risk management.
Why Work With Us
People at Optiver love challenges, welcome collaboration, and strive to be better tomorrow than they are today. Improving the market is an extraordinary challenge that requires a carefully crafted approach. Optiver provides a collaborative working environment to tackle these challenges. In fact, it is this way of working that sets us apart.
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