Algorithmic Trading C++ Engineer - Equities

About Optiver

Optiver is a global market maker established in 1986 with headquarters in Amsterdam and offices across major financial hubs including Sydney, London, Chicago, and Asia-Pacific cities. The company employs around 2,000 people globally and is dedicated to enhancing market quality through competitive pricing, effective execution, and sound risk management. Optiver trades a broad set of financial instruments such as listed derivatives, cash equities, ETFs, bonds, and foreign currencies using proprietary capital and risk.

The Sydney office, founded in 1996, plays a pivotal role in Asian markets, actively trading on exchanges in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan, and serves as Optiver’s APAC headquarters.

Role Overview

We are seeking experienced C++ engineers to develop and maintain our high-performance, globally distributed, low-latency equities market making platform. This role offers close collaboration with trading and quantitative research teams, providing quick insight into the business and immediate opportunity to influence trading outcomes. Candidates will refine and implement trading algorithms tailored for equities exchanges and deploy software across worldwide market environments.

Working from Sydney, you will focus on live trading systems for Asian markets with distinct microstructure characteristics, while also contributing to the expansion of our equities platform in Europe and the USA, without needing to engage during US or European market hours.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner daily with traders and quantitative researchers to translate trading ideas into software pricing, quoting, and execution systems specialized for equities markets.
• Collaborate with fellow engineers to architect, develop, and maintain a globally distributed equities trading platform meeting stringent real-time performance requirements.
• Engage in rapid development cycles, taking ownership of end-to-end software delivery including testing and same-day production deployment.
• Apply low-level engineering skills to implement latency-sensitive trading logic and strategies with high performance.

Candidate Profile

• Minimum two years of software engineering experience involving distributed systems, low-latency backend systems, or client/server architectures.
• Proficient in object-oriented programming with C++ or Java/C#, with strong motivation to work primarily in C++.
• Solid foundation in computer science fundamentals, including operating systems, data structures, and algorithms.
• Familiarity with Python for automation and tooling development.
• Comfortable incorporating AI tools within workflows while maintaining code quality and runtime performance.
• Drawn to solving challenging technical problems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Five or more years of experience in software engineering focused on distributed or low-latency systems.
• Advanced expertise in C++ development.
• Experience with relational databases such as Postgres for configuration, analytics, and research processes.
• Background working in electronic trading or knowledge of equities trading operations.
• Experience with backtest-driven development methodologies.

Benefits and Culture

Join a collaborative and excellence-driven culture surrounded by driven, curious, and creative colleagues. The environment supports continuous growth with extensive training and mentoring opportunities. Perks include:

• A generous, performance-based bonus structure aligned with a global profit-sharing model fostering cooperation across teams and offices.
• A diverse and intelligent peer group within a rewarding workplace.
• Comprehensive training and personal development resources.
• Daily provided breakfast and lunch with an in-house barista.
• Gym membership and weekly on-site chair massages.
• Regular social events and a company retreat every two years.
• Relocation assistance including competitive packages and visa sponsorship where relevant.

Diversity and Inclusion

Optiver is dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion. Applications from candidates of all backgrounds are welcome. Reasonable adjustments are available during the hiring process upon request.