---
title: 'Institutional Trader Intern (2027 Start - Chicago) at Optiver Private Jobs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/institutional-trader-intern-2027-start-chicago-optiver-private-jobs-chicago-66c7mb4b7rgj'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-16'
---

# Institutional Trader Intern (2027 Start - Chicago) at Optiver Private Jobs

- **Company:** Optiver Private Jobs
- **Location:** Chicago Illinois, United States
- **Compensation:** $45k–$50k
- **Posted:** 2026-07-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-16
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/optiverprivate/jobs/8402208002

## Job description

As an Institutional Trader Intern at Optiver, you’ll spend your summer embedded in the fast-paced environment of our trading floor, learning from industry experts.

Through a combination of structured education sessions and hands-on experience in live market conditions, you’ll gain deep insight into how markets move and how our Institutional Traders make impact. You’ll test your ideas, sharpen your decision-making, and collaborate with peers and mentors to solve real market challenges.

By the end of the 10-week internship, you’ll be equipped with the foundational skills and knowledge required to succeed as an Institutional Trader at a top global trading firm.

What you’ll do:

Our internship, which demands quick thinking, a critical mindset, and decisive action, offers one of the closest experiences to real trading you can get. Mentored by the Institutional Trader team, you’ll have the opportunity to:

- Deep dive into trading fundamentals, from theoretical concepts to financial markets, trading strategies, and cutting-edge technology.
- Learn to identify and capitalize on trading opportunities while representing our markets and executing trades with external counterparties.
- Understand how to expand our external trading network by sourcing, developing, and maintaining trading relationships.
- Push your limits and accelerate your growth in a fascinating and high-performing environment.

What you’ll get:

You’ll join a culture of collaboration and excellence, surrounded by curious thinkers and creative problem-solvers. Motivated by a passion for continuous improvement, you’ll thrive in a supportive, high-performing environment alongside talented colleagues, collectively tackling some of the toughest challenges in the financial markets.

In addition, you’ll receive:

- The opportunity to work alongside best-in-class professionals from over 40 different countries
- The opportunity to earn a full-time offer in Chicago
- A highly-competitive internship compensation package
- Optiver-covered flights, living accommodations, and commuting stipends
- Extensive office perks, including breakfast, lunch and snacks, regular social events, clubs, sporting leagues and more

Who you are:

- A student pursuing a bachelor’s or master’s degree in a related STEM field, Business, or Economics
- On track to graduate between December 2027 to June 2028, with junior standing or higher
- Strong communication skills and self-assurance
- Ability and interest in building and maintaining trading relationships and strategic partnerships
- Superior quantitative and logical reasoning skills
- Competitive attitude and dedication to constantly improve

Who we are:

At Optiver, our mission is to improve the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency and stabilising the market no matter the conditions. With a focus on continuous improvement, we prioritise safeguarding the health and efficiency of the markets for all participants. As one of the largest market making institutions, we are a respected partner on 100+ exchanges across the globe.

Our differences are our edge. Optiver does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability, or other legally protected characteristics.

Optiver has a global application re-apply policy for our intern and graduate roles. If you have completed an online assessment or interviewed for a trading graduate or internship role at any Optiver location in the past 8 months, please note that you are not yet eligible to reapply. We welcome you to re-apply to after the 8-month cool off period.

Below is the expected compensation for this position. This is a good-faith estimate of the base pay scale and sign-on bonus for this position and offers will ultimately be determined based on experience, education, skill set, and performance in the interview process. This position will also be eligible for the benefits listed above.

Base Salary Range $45,000—$50,000 USD

## About Optiver Private Jobs

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Optiver is a technology-driven global market maker that provides liquidity and accurate pricing across exchanges using advanced quantitative research, low-latency engineering, and risk management.
- **Entity Type**: Private (bootstrapped, no external funding disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: Amsterdam, Netherlands (with major offices in Chicago, Austin, Sydney, Shanghai, Singapore, and London)
- **Founded**: 1986
- **Founders**: Johann Kaemingk, Arnold van der Woude, and Juul Jansen (original founders of the Amsterdam trading floor)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Financial services, market making, proprietary trading, quantitative finance
- **Target customers**: Exchanges, institutional investors, brokers (B2B/wholesale); as a liquidity provider, Optiver serves the broader financial ecosystem
- **Mission or purpose**: "To constantly improve the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency, and acting as a stabilising force no matter the market conditions."

## Products & Services
- **Market Making**: Pricing and trading a broad universe of instruments — options, ETFs, equities, bonds, currencies — across more than 100 global exchanges
- **Quantitative Research**: Using deep learning, LLMs, statistical modelling, and reinforcement learning to extract predictive signals from market and alternative data
- **Low-Latency Technology**: Building proprietary high-speed trading systems with C++, FPGA hardware, and large-scale data platforms
- **Risk Management**: Sophisticated real-time exposure management and probabilistic pricing models

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private firm)
- **Key Metric**: Executes over 10 million trades daily; connects to 70+ exchanges as a trusted market maker (as stated on the company website)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: None (self-funded); partners include exchanges globally
- **Growth Signals**: Continues to expand offices (Austin opened as innovation hub), invests heavily in machine learning and AI workflows, and maintains consistent hiring across trading, research, and engineering teams worldwide

## Competitive Advantages
- **40 years of compounding market experience and historical data**: Decades of proprietary market data and broker relationships provide a foundation for predictive models that newer firms lack.
- **Technology-first culture**: In-house FPGA, C++, and large-scale data engineering teams build systems where a 1% improvement shows up across millions of live decisions — giving a measurable edge.
- **Global scale with local expertise**: A network of offices in different time zones and regulatory regimes (US, Europe, APAC) enables 24/7 trading and adaptation to local market structures.
- **Attracts top talent**: Known for highly competitive compensation, global profit sharing, and a collaborative, non-hierarchical environment that draws engineers, quants, and traders from top universities and tech companies.

## Strategic Focus
- **Deepening AI/ML integration**: Expanding use of machine learning, LLMs, and reinforcement learning in pricing and signal generation.
- **Innovation in hardware**: Continued investment in FPGA acceleration and low-latency network infrastructure to maintain millisecond-level advantages.
- **Talent growth**: Scaling offices in growth hubs like Austin and Shanghai, with a focus on quantitative research, software/hardware engineering, and data science.
- **Global expansion**: Connecting to new exchanges and instrument classes to broaden liquidity provision.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as "collaboration and excellence" with "curious thinkers and creative problem-solvers"; a flat structure where engineers work directly with traders.
- **Work policy**: Hybrid/in-office depending on role; offices offer extensive perks (breakfast, lunch, snacks, social events, clubs, sporting leagues) and 25 paid vacation days plus market holidays.
- **Compensation**: Highly competitive base salaries (e.g., FPGA Engineer base $200k in Chicago), discretionary bonuses, global profit-sharing pool, 401k match up to 50%, and comprehensive health/benefits.
- **Engineering culture**: Emphasis on low-level systems, FPGAs, C++, and big data; teams own projects from concept to production with rapid experimentation cycles.
- **Global mobility**: Opportunities to rotate or relocate between offices in Chicago, Austin, Sydney, Shanghai, Singapore, and Amsterdam.

## Sources
1. [optiver.com](https://www.optiver.com/)
2. [optiver.com/join-us](https://www.optiver.com/join-us/)
3. [optiver.com/join-us/jobs](https://www.optiver.com/join-us/jobs/)
4. [greenhouse.io (Optiver Private Jobs) - FPGA Engineer posting](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/optiverprivate/jobs/8375608002)

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