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Optiver

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4.6
  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

Quantitative Researcher - Graduate Program (Feb 2025)

Location details

On-site

  • Australia

    Australia

    • New South Wales

      Sydney

  • New Zealand

    New Zealand

Location

Sydney, New Zealand

Opportunity expired

Opportunity details

  • Opportunity typeGraduate Job or Program
  • SalaryAUD 200,000 - 250,000 / Year
  • Additional benefits+ Bonus
  • Number of vacancies5-10 vacancies
  • Application open dateApply by 31 May 2024
  • Start dateStart date 22 Feb 2025

As a Graduate Quantitative Researcher, youโ€™ll kickstart the first four weeks of your training program in our head office in Amsterdam, alongside global peers. Then, you'll return to Sydney and join one of our Research teams, where youโ€™ll put your knowledge into practice and work on entrepreneurial projects that create an immediate impact.

Ready for the opportunity of a lifetime? Apply now/Pre-register.

WHO WE ARE

Optiver is a tech-driven trading firm and leading global market maker. For over 35 years, Optiver has been improving financial markets around the world, making them more transparent and efficient for all participants. With more than 1,600 employees in offices around the world, weโ€™re united in our commitment to improving the market through competitive pricing, execution and thorough risk management. By providing liquidity on multiple exchanges across the world, we actively trade on 70+ exchanges, where weโ€™re trusted to always provide accurate buy and sell pricing โ€“ no matter the market conditions.

Optiverโ€™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 in the Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan exchanges, and act as Optiverโ€™s APAC head office. 

WHAT YOUโ€™LL DO

Know anything about trading or financial markets? Don't worry, you bring the passion and we'll bring the training to support you along the way.

As our Graduate Quantitative Researcher, you'll work on critical projects that help us improve global financial markets. Youโ€™ll be constantly applying your top-tier analytical abilities to create insights and proposals that drive impactful and innovative trading strategies.

Every day will present you with new and interesting challenges to solve. And itโ€™s up to you and your team to drive our success by ensuring that our quantitative models remain at the cutting edge of constantly evolving capital markets.

WHO YOU ARE

Youโ€™re an inquisitive, critical thinker who is creative in innovating new solutions. You're constantly keen to understand the โ€œwhyโ€ and you're a strong believer in the power of collaborative problem-solving. In addition, you:

  • Are pragmatic and focused on outcomes.
  • Can communicate technical concepts well.
  • Enjoy utilising technology, programming or maths in your daily life to solve problems.
  • Possess programming experience in any language (C, C++, Python, Basic, JAVA, etc.).

We offer a range of opportunities in our Research team. In the application, select the role that appeals to you the most, and we'll work with you in the recruitment process to ensure the role is most suitable for you. Below are examples of the different roles available.

  • D1 Researcher

As a D1 Researcher, youโ€™ll collaborate with traders and developers to build live trading strategies, using cutting-edge statistical and machine-learning algorithms. Youโ€™ll build trading signals from the market or fundamental data, combine signals and optimise strategy parameters through our state-of-the-art back-testing infrastructure.

Whilst you'll use a mix of statistics, computer science and economics in your research, there are no textbook solutions to what you aim to solve. Instead, youโ€™re driven to go beyond theory and search for hidden signals to help you create profitable strategies.

  • Options Pricing Research

As an Options Pricing Researcher, youโ€™ll be responsible for the creation and improvement of our underlying pricing models, as well as increasing our statistical understanding of the underlying dynamics that impact the market.

Youโ€™ll work with traders to create and improve volatility surfaces, yield curves, and other quantitative elements in our automated trading systems. Youโ€™ll find creative solutions to real-world problems, test those solutions with historical parameters and market data, and then implement these changes in our trading system to improve our ability to improve global financial markets.

  • Performance and Strategy Researchers

If you join as the Performance or Strategy Researcher internship, youโ€™ll develop and test hypotheses experimentally, under real-world conditions and constraints, to drive improvements in our trading systems.

As a Strategy Researcher, youโ€™ll be leveraging our understanding of execution success and pricing to design and improve automated trading strategies. The scope of projects youโ€™ll work on is broad, ranging from optimising strategy parameters, to examining market data and finding new hidden market opportunities, to developing new strategies that capture these opportunities.

As a Performance Researcher, you'll be in the excitement of ensuring our trading systems capture the most competitive nanosecond-level trades. Your responsibilities will vary - from reverse engineering devices and networks, to analysing terabytes of data. Some days you'll collaborate with our hardware team to design features for custom FPGAs, some you'll analyse top events of the day to find patterns, and others you'll be in front of a whiteboard with other researchers discussing theories.

Whether you're studying computer science, electrical engineering, maths or anything in-between; if you've looked at a black box and thought "how does that work" and started to take it apart - this is the role for you.

ELIGIBILITY

  • A final-year/Honours/Master/PhD student or a recent graduate (up to 4 years)
  • Studying a highly quantitative or technically focused degree, such as Maths, Statistics, Physics, Elec / Mechatronic / Software Engineering, Computer Science, Applied/Quantitative Finance or Econometrics.
  • An Australian or New Zealand Citizen, Australian Permanent Resident or able to secure full working rights after graduating.

WHAT YOUโ€™LL GET

  • The chance to work alongside diverse and intelligent peers in a rewarding environment
  • Competitive remuneration, including an attractive bonus structure and additional leave entitlements
  • Training, mentorship and personal development opportunities
  • Gym membership plus weekly in-house chair massages
  • Daily breakfast, lunch and an in-house barista
  • Regular social events including an annual company trip
  • A work-from-home allowance and support
  • Guided relocation and a competitive relocation package

As an intentionally flat organisation, we believe that great ideas and impact can come from everyone. We are passionate about empowering individuals and creating diverse teams that thrive. Every person at Optiver should feel included, valued and respected because we believe our best work is done together. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion 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.

Does this sound like the future youโ€™re looking for? Take up the challenge and apply/register today!

If you have any questions regarding this opportunity, please contact us at careers@optiver.com.au.

Work rights

The opportunity is available to applicants in any of the following categories.

Work light flag
Australia
Australian Citizen โ€ข Australian Permanent Resident โ€ข Australian Work Visa (All Other)
Work light flag
New Zealand
New Zealand Citizen

Qualifications & other requirements

You should have or be completing the following to apply for this opportunity.

Degree or Certificate
Qualification level
Qualification level
Bachelor or higher
Study field
Study field (any)

Hiring criteria

  • Experience requirementNo experience required
  • Working rights
    New Zealand Citizen
  • Study fields
    Engineering & Mathematics
  • Degree typesBachelor or higher
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Reviews

user
Graduate
Sydney
โ€ข
5 months ago

I am a trader. It is my responsibility to make decisions about which trades to make, how to parametrise our systems, and work with other traders and developers to improve our systems

user
Graduate
Sydney
โ€ข
2 years ago

Due to the emphasis on business acumen, employees know about the business impact of what they work on, and why it matters. As a software dev, I work on maintaining and developing software solutions to solve business/compliance problems.

user
Graduate
Sydney
โ€ข
2 years ago

Working with traders to improve the behaviour of auto traders. Very interesting and rewarding. Given a lot of project ownership.

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About the employer

Optiver Logo

Optiver

Rating

4.6

Number of employees

1,000 - 50,000 employees

Industries

Trading

Ready to accelerate your career? Discover Optiver, a global tech-driven trading firm.

Pros and cons of working at Optiver

Pros

  • The responsibility to work on impactful projects from early on.

  • The perks - company trip, daily meals, weekly massages.

  • Opportunities are there for people who want them -- you can very quickly take ownership of a problem or space.

  • Lots of smart people and interesting problems to solve.

  • People challenge each other to be best that they can be. There is no blame with errors and every opportunity to learn is taken.

Cons

    • You will constantly be working on di๏ฌ€erent products, with tight timelines and high ownership.

    • The finance domain is quite complex, and onboarding/learning about new financial concepts... is challenging.

    • The expectations are high and constant.

    • Too many things that could be done.

    • Can be intense at times