Network Engineer at Optiver in Chicago, IL

Optiver’s industry-leading proprietary trading systems depend on reliable and scalable networks to power our trading activities on financial exchanges around the world. As a Network Engineer, your job will be to ensure Optiver has the fast connectivity and physical infrastructure to allow our traders and engineers to get market data accurately and quickly, making a direct impact to our business.

What you’ll do:

Optiver’s bespoke trading infrastructure requires diverse network engineering experience. From low-latency, network automation and WAN technologies to data center and colocation design, you’ll l work on critical projects that will help us scale our trading business:

• Deploy, monitor, troubleshoot and manage our network infrastructure
• Work on designing new colocations and improving connectivity in existing colocations as well as our Data Center network
• Identify, recommend and implement network system optimizations and focus on network solutions that provide fast information
• Assist with planned maintenances (migrations, expansions, hardware and software upgrades)
• Provide technical expertise and support to a high frequency trading floor in a competitive market-making environment
• Ensure all aspects of our WAN network link together across our global data center presence
• Contribute to capacity planning and traffic flow optimization
• Help push us towards intelligent automation
• Tackle technical debt while removing complexity

Who you are:

• Strong network and performance monitoring skills and knowledge of network capacity planning
• Experience working across LAN and global WAN networks
• Cisco and Arista network equipment experience preferred
• Experience troubleshooting network transport protocols – TCP/UDP
• Deep understanding and experience with routing protocols (such as OSPF, BGP) and network protocols (such as Multicast, Spanning Tree, HSRP)
• Network automation experience with strong Python scripting experience preferred
• Networking monitoring and alerting systems experience
• A belief that good documentation helps successful project delivery
• A drive for improvement and motivation to push through friction

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
• A highly competitive compensation package
• Global profit-sharing pool and performance-based bonus structure
• 401(k) match up to 50%
• Comprehensive health, mental, dental, vision, disability, and life coverage
• 25 paid vacation days alongside market holidays
• Extensive office perks, including breakfast, lunch and snacks, regular social events, clubs, sporting leagues and more

Who we are:

At Optiver, our mission is to improve the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency and stabilizing the market no matter the conditions. With a focus on continuous improvement, we prioritize 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.

Below is the expected base salary for this position. This position will also be eligible for a discretionary bonus and Optiver’s benefits package with the benefits listed above.

Base Salary Range

$200,000—$200,000 USD