Quantitative Researcher Internship – 2023-24

Our Research Summer Internship program will give you a peek into how data science is used to improve global financial markets. With guidance from your mentor and team, you'll collaborate on entrepreneurial projects that solve Optiver’s real-world challenges. 

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, we’re united in our commitment to improve 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 we’re trusted to always provide accurate buy and sell pricing – no matter the market conditions.

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

Our 12-week Research Summer Internship program is the perfect opportunity for you to work behind-the-scenes on real-world projects within our renowned Research team.

Know nothing about trading or financial markets? Don't worry, you bring the passion and we'll bring the training to support you along the way.

Over the first few weeks, you'll be immersed in our industry-leading training program, alongside Traders and Software Developers, to learn the ins and outs of quantitative trading. Once you’ve got the basics covered, you’ll put your knowledge into practice and work on a project within one of the Research teams. Our experienced Researchers will mentor and guide you through the process. 

By the end of the internship, you’ll have a solid theoretical and practical understanding of life as a Quantitative Researcher. 

WHO YOU ARE

You’re an inquisitive, critical thinker who is creative in innovating new solutions. You're constantly keen to understand the “why” 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, you’ll collaborate with traders and developers to develop live trading strategies, using cutting-edge statistical and machine learning algorithms. You’ll build trading signals from 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, you’re driven to go beyond theory and search for hidden signals to help you create profitable strategies.

 Check out Dom's 'Day in the life' feature to learn more. 

• Options Pricing Research

As an Options Pricing Researcher, you’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.

You’ll work with traders to create and improve volatility surfaces, yield curves, and other quantitative elements in our automated trading systems. You’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.

Check out Noah’s ‘Day in the life’ feature to learn more.

• Performance and Strategy Researchers

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

As a Strategy Researcher, you’ll be leveraging our understanding of execution success and pricing to design and improve automated trading strategies. The scope of projects you’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.

Check out Rob’s ‘Day in the life’ feature to learn more.

ELIGIBILITY

• A penultimate or pre-penultimate year university student
• 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 provide evidence of full working rights for the duration of the internship.

WHAT YOU’LL GET

• The chance to work alongside diverse and intelligent peers in a rewarding environment
• Competitive remuneration
• Training, mentorship and personal development opportunities
• Gym membership plus weekly in-house chair massages
• Work-from-home allowance and support
• Daily breakfast, lunch and an in-house barista

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 you’re looking for? Take up the challenge and apply today!
If you have any questions regarding this opportunity, please contact us at [email protected].