Network Engineer

Optiver is looking for a Network Engineer with a passion for solving problems and reducing complexity. You will join a team responsible for owning the networks that our industry-leading proprietary trading systems rely on. From day one, your contributions to the design, optimization and maintenance of our globally distributed networks will allow our traders and engineers to continue operating at the highest level of performance, making a direct impact to our business. Speed, reliability and scalability are at the center of everything that we do.

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 70+ exchanges across the globe. Our mission is to constantly improve the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency and acting as a stabilizing 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.

Optiver Chicago’s culture parallels the energetic city we’re immersed in. Home to the Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Board Options Exchange, and Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago has established itself as the trading capital of the US. Active on leading US exchanges, Optiver’s Chicago office trades a wide range of products from listed derivatives to cash equities, ETFs, bonds and foreign exchange.

What you’ll do:

Joining Optiver's Network Engineering team means tackling challenges across low-latency systems, network automation, data center and WAN technologies, colocation design, and enterprise security—critical components that support our competitive market-making business. Specifically you will:

• Provide technical expertise to support a high frequency trading floor in a competitive market-making environment

• Identify, design and implement network optimizations

• Automate and eliminate manual elements of our network infrastructure

• Assist with planned upgrades and maintenance (migrations, expansions, hardware and software upgrades)

• Ensure all aspects of our WAN network function correctly across our global data centers and colocations

• Contribute to capacity planning, connectivity improvements and traffic flow optimization

• Contribute to the ongoing standardization of our environments & our Infrastructure as Code vision

Who you are:

• Passionate about network performance, monitoring & capacity planning

• Experience with LAN and WAN technologies

• In depth experience with network transport & routing protocols (TCP/UDP, OSPF, BGP, Multicast)

• Comfortable working in a multi-vendor environment (Cisco, Arista, Palo Alto)

• Experience with network security and firewalls

• Confident with a variety of network monitoring and alerting tools

• Strong communication skills, ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical colleagues, via presentation or documentation

• Proficiency in Python scripting for automation is beneficial but not required

• Experience with low-latency networking, configuration management tooling functions, time series databases and centralized logging solutions are beneficial, but not required

What you’ll get:

• Work alongside best-in-class professionals from over 40 different countries.

• Performance based bonus structure that is unmatched anywhere in the industry. We combine our profits across desks, teams and offices into a global profit pool fostering a truly collaborative environment to work in.

• Ownership over initiatives that directly solve business problems. 

Alongside this, you will get great other benefits such as 25 paid vacation days and market holidays, fully paid commuting expenses and health insurance, daily breakfast and lunch, training opportunities, 401(k) match up to 50% and charitable match opportunities, regular social events and clubs, and many more.

At Optiver, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. Optiver recruits, employs, trains, compensates and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability, or other legally protected characteristics.