Production Engineer

Optiver's Production Engineering teams manage our live trading environment, which is active across 50+ global exchanges and hundreds of thousands of interconnected financial products. Our world-class infrastructure is a combination of vastly distributed systems, high-performance computing and low-latency trading algorithms, as well as high-throughput dataflows and data analysis. To keep pace with the ever-changing markets, Optiver must always react with speed, and therefore takes an in-house approach to building, analysing, managing and improving our custom infrastructure. Taking this autonomy a step further, Optiver's huge volumes of data are stored at our own data centre rather than in the cloud. Our technological independence enables us to evolve our systems on a daily basis, operating with tight feedback loops and quick development cycles. The challenge is balancing innovation with reliability and performance in such a complex, time-pressured environment – and that's exactly where you come in.

WHO WE ARE:

Optiver is a tech-driven trading firm and leading global market maker. As one of the oldest market making institutions, we are a trusted partner of 50+ exchanges across the globe. Our mission is to constantly improve the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency and acting as a stabilising force no matter the market conditions. With a focus on continuous improvement, we participate in the safeguarding of healthy and efficient markets for everyone who participates.

Our Amsterdam office is where it all began. Over 35 years ago, Optiver’s business started with a single trader on the floor of Amsterdam’s European Stock Exchange. Since our 1986 founding, Optiver’s Amsterdam office has grown into one of the most dynamic and exciting trading floors in Europe. Our culture reflects the Dutch capital city’s progressive, innovative and inclusive nature. With its unique spirit, Amsterdam is the ideal hub for our teams to trade a wide range of products from listed derivatives to cash equities, ETFs, bonds and foreign exchange.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

As a Production Engineer, you'll be responsible for deploying, maintaining, monitoring and improving the reliability, scalability and performance of our in-house built trading systems. At Optiver, reliability means prevention and swift resolution across our software, to guarantee optimum functioning even in the most extreme market conditions. Having a decisive nature, engineering mindset and preference for simple solutions are essential to keeping our systems reliable.

The Production Engineer role is crucial for Optiver's trading activities. Your scope will cover market access, monitoring and compliance, strategy evaluation and management, performance tuning and trading automation. Sitting in the middle of our buzzing trading floor, you will have constant face-to-face interaction with end-users (Traders and Researchers as well as fellow Engineers). This is an engineering role, not a support role, so you'll set the standards for our production environment. As part of our core business, you will make a real, direct impact on our ability to trade and trading results. No two days are the same in our high-stakes, flat-hierarchy environment.

Learn more about a day in the life of a Production Engineer (we call this job Application Engineer internally) in this blog post and this video.

WHO YOU ARE:

• You are a pragmatic, logical thinker.
• With a facilitating and enabling attitude, you always strive to find clean and simple solutions.
• You are naturally curious about hardware and software, and how these interact.
• You want to work on a broad range of projects and use various tools to best solve any problem at hand.
• With a hands-on approach, you can look at code, figure out how it works and explore how to make it better.
• You are able to clearly explain your thoughts through written and verbal communication, ask the right questions, and are not afraid to challenge or defend a strategy.
• You seek out opportunities to leave your comfort zone and enjoy frequent change.

In terms of skillset, we're looking for:

• Experience managing day-to-day operations of software and hardware infrastructure
• Strong affinity with Unix/Linux systems
• The ability to automate tasks using Python
• Strong design, debugging, and problem solving skills
• Experience with relational databases (e.g. we use PostgreSQL but welcome experience with any other database);
• An understanding of networking fundamentals and protocols.

No prior trading or financial experience is needed – our onboarding program will kick-start your career at Optiver and support you in gaining all the relevant knowledge about our business.

WHAT YOU'LL GET:

• The chance to start your career working alongside best-in-class professionals from over 40 different countries.

Alongside this you will get great secondary benefits such as 25 paid vacation days, fully paid first-class commuting expenses, training opportunities, discounts on health insurance, breakfast and lunch facilities, sports and leisure activities, Friday afternoon drinks and even weekly in-house chair massages. Being highly international, we are accustomed to guiding expats through their relocation, offering competitive relocation packages and providing visa sponsorship where necessary.

HOW TO APPLY:

Are you interested in furthering your career on one of the most dynamic and exciting trading floors in Europe?

Apply directly via the form below for the position of Production Engineer. Please provide us with a CV and letter of motivation in English. Applications without a letter of motivation will not be reviewed. When we think there is a potential match, you will hear from us sooner than you expect. If you have any questions feel free to contact our Recruiter team via [email protected]

If you are selected from your application to proceed to the next round for the position of Production Engineer, you will be required to take an online assessment.

Kindly note that we do not require any assistance from third-parties including agencies in the recruitment of this role.

DIVERSITY STATEMENT:

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.