Featured Employer of the Week: Optiver

Optiver is a worldwide market maker and derivatives trading firm headquartered in Amsterdam, with offices strategically located in Chicago and Sydney. Founded in 1986, Optiver has been profitable every year of its existence. Optiver US LLC is a registered broker-dealer and participates in trading on various U.S. securities and commodities exchanges.

At a proprietary trading firm like Optiver, the relationship between IT and trading is vital to the firm’s success. In an industry where one bug can cost six-figures, striving for perfection is crucial. The software development teams at Optiver are highly collaborative and strive to find the right solution instead of just “a” solution.

This summer, Optiver US LLC, located in Chicago, will host its inaugural software development internship program for selected Computer Science undergraduate students. These development interns will learn the basics of options trading and see what it takes to write software that never fails. Each intern will be assigned to one of three development teams from whom they will learn and work alongside. Possible projects could include: helping to build the next generation of options trading user interfaces by experimenting with new forms of data representation; testing out various data visualization scripting/ processing libraries, or using select programming languages to process hundreds of millions of quotes in a semi real-time basis.

Interns across all teams will strive to understand complex market dynamics so that Optiver can react quickly and more efficiently across an increasingly large and diverse array of financial products. By the time interns head back to school in the fall, their software development skills will be taken to another level in a dynamic and highly competitive industry.

Students interested in applying for future internship opportunities, should visit www.optiver.com and submit their resume electronically for consideration. Optiver US will begin accepting resumes for summer of 2013 in August 2012, and will be in attendance at various Harvey Mudd on-campus recruiting events this fall.