--- title: 'Senior Derivatives Trader (Experienced) at Valkyrie Trading' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-derivatives-trader-experienced-valkyrie-trading-chicago-p2vjp65dv1qk' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-11' --- # Senior Derivatives Trader (Experienced) at Valkyrie Trading - **Company:** Valkyrie Trading - **Location:** Chicago, IL - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2018-08-30 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/valkyrietrading/90f1e883-7309-4b5c-8820-89bf078306c5 ## Job description What You’ll Do: Senior Derivatives Traders are expected to own, maintain, grow, and be responsible for key revenue streams for one or more products on our trading desks. In this role, you will be responsible for all risk and inventory held by the trading time, and expected to leverage your experience and knowledge in making critical decisions in real-time. On every level, Senior Traders will look to effectuate systemic improvements to the trading strategy to ensure the long-term viability and competitiveness of the strategy. What You'll Need: - 4+ years experience on a trading desk - A strong ability to manage and assess risk in a derivatives portfolio - A passion for trading and financial markets - A desire to develop and constantly improve the strategies and models that drive our trading activities - A tenacious determination to problem solve - Strong math and numerical aptitude - Entrepreneurial spirit - A keen attention to detail - Willingness to dig into problems - Relentless desire to constantly improve - Proactive attitude - Quantitative analysis skills are a plus - Advanced degrees preferred What You'll Get: - Competitive salaries and performance bonuses - Top-tier medical and dental coverage - Relocation assistance packages - Generous vacation policy - Training opportunities and continuing education - Catered lunch, snacks, and beverages - Group outings and company parties - Casual dress environment Salary range - $180,000-207,000 - This position is also eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. Our Vision - Valkyrie’s vision is to be an organization where curious, driven, and innovative people are able to compete and win in the world’s most competitive landscape – the financial markets.   Daily competition in the financial markets provides the ideal arena to push ourselves further as we are ever striving to grow, improve, and win.  We recognize that there are extraordinary opportunities to be had every day, and by exploring, collaborating, and building, we can accomplish remarkable results together. ## About Valkyrie Trading ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Valkyrie Trading builds high-performance automated trading systems to embrace trading opportunities in modern derivatives markets. - **Entity Type**: Private (Privately Held) - **Headquarters**: Chicago, Illinois, United States - **Founded**: 2011 - **Founders**: James Yeung (Co-Founder and Partner) ## Core Business - **Primary industries**: Capital Markets / Proprietary Derivatives Trading - **Target customers**: The firm trades for its own account (not client-facing). It operates in B2B market infrastructure and is a market-making/prop trading firm. - **Mission or purpose**: To tackle complex and practical challenges in dynamic financial markets by building cutting-edge technology from the ground up, with a focus on quantitative innovation and data-driven decision-making. ## Products & Services - **Automated Trading Systems**: Proprietary, in-house developed high-frequency and algorithmic trading software for derivatives (options, futures). - **Quantitative Research & Modeling**: Data science-driven strategy development that bridges trading and software teams. - **Market Making & Execution**: Real-time trading operations across global derivatives exchanges. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not disclosed (private company). - **Key Metric**: Total employees ~44 (as of 2026); headcount growth -1.9% YoY. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Privately held; no external funding rounds disclosed. Partners include James Yeung, Sean Tseng, Brian Severyn. - **Growth Signals**: Active hiring for Junior Software Engineer, Junior Derivatives Trader, and Trade Support Engineer roles (2026-2027 start dates). LinkedIn follower growth of +19.7% year-over-year. High employer rating (4.4/5, 22 reviews) and strong culture/career scores (4.6/5). ## Competitive Advantages - **Collaborative, flat structure**: “No one is a cog in the machine” – developers, traders, and quants work closely together, iterating daily. - **In-house technology**: All trading systems built from scratch, giving full control over speed and optimization. - **Data-centric culture**: Decisions guided by quantitative analysis, not intuition. - **Location in Chicago’s derivatives hub**: Access to talent and proximity to CME/CBOE. ## Strategic Focus - **Growth through talent**: Prioritizing campus recruiting for junior roles (no internships for 2026-2027, but a potential Trading Boot Camp is being explored). - **Technology & automation**: Continually improving trading system performance, scalability, and reliability. - **Global expansion**: Distributed workforce (United States, Namibia, Germany, Canada) and European hours trading desk. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Highly collaborative, data-driven, and entrepreneurial. Employees report very high culture and career satisfaction (4.6/5). - **Remote/hybrid/office**: All current job listings are **on-site** in Chicago, IL. - **Benefits**: Health insurance (PPO/HMO/HSA), dental, vision, daily lunch, discount gym memberships, performance bonuses. - **Engineering culture**: Developers work on real-time trading systems, solving challenging problems in programming, networking, and latency optimization. Direct impact on firm profitability. - **Compensation**: Competitive – Senior Software Engineer ~$165K/year, Senior Trader ~$174K/year (based on public salary data from LinkedIn). ## Sources 1. [valkyrietrading.com – What We Do](https://www.valkyrietrading.com/what-we-do/) 2. [valkyrietrading.com – Careers & Benefits](https://www.valkyrietrading.com/careers/) 3. [LinkedIn – Valkyrie Trading](https://linkedin.com/company/valkyrie-trading) 4. [Lever – Valkyrie Trading Jobs](https://jobs.lever.co/valkyrietrading) 5. [Built In Chicago – Valkyrie Trading Profile](https://www.builtinchicago.org/company/valkyrie-trading) ## Other roles at Valkyrie Trading - [Trade Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/trade-support-engineer-valkyrie-trading-chicago-qfjr3e20qfkm) — Chicago, IL - [Quantitative Researcher (Experienced)](https://feeny.ai/job/quantitative-researcher-experienced-valkyrie-trading-chicago-2y250cqw4jwk) — Chicago, IL - [Junior Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-software-engineer-valkyrie-trading-chicago-y759dwa8ssd9) — Chicago, IL - [Junior Derivatives Trader](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-derivatives-trader-valkyrie-trading-chicago-7cyxk76a67nx) — Chicago, IL - [Derivatives Trader (European Hours)](https://feeny.ai/job/derivatives-trader-european-hours-valkyrie-trading-chicago-wsebwn6epr39) — Chicago, IL