Principal Engineer (Data)

Optiver is a global market maker founded in Amsterdam, with offices in London, Chicago, Austin, New York, Sydney, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and Mumbai. Established in 1986, today we are a leading liquidity provider, with close to 2,000 employees in offices around the world, united in our commitment to improve the market through competitive pricing, execution and risk management. By providing liquidity on multiple exchanges across the world in various financial instruments we participate in the safeguarding of healthy and efficient markets. We provide liquidity to financial markets using our own capital, at our own risk, trading a wide range of products: listed derivatives, cash equities, ETFs, bonds and foreign currencies.

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. 

As a Principal Engineer, you will play a key role in building and evolving Optiver’s next-generation data platform that supports research and real-time trading.

The platform spans orchestration, storage, access and governance of data at scale, enabling engineers, researchers and traders to work efficiently with high-quality data.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Designing and developing scalable data platform components (e.g. orchestration, storage formats, metadata and streaming systems)
• Working across the full lifecycle: problem understanding, design, implementation, testing, deployment and monitoring
• Contributing to architectural decisions that improve performance, scalability and reliability
• Standardising data ingestion and access patterns, including schema management, lineage, permissions and auditing
• Collaborating with stakeholders across engineering, research, trading, SRE and security to deliver impactful solutions
• Driving high-quality engineering practices, including code quality, testing and observability
• Partnering with global teams to align on shared patterns and platforms

This is a hands-on role with meaningful contribution to system design and production code

Optiver needs our next Principal Engineer to have:

• 7+ years experience as a Software Engineer delivering production platforms.

• Strong experience with distributed systems & reliability fundamentals, including partitioning, replication, consistency/availability tradeoffs.

• Expertise with one or more of Python/C++/Java/Rust. Solid API and system design skills.

• Data platform fundamentals, including batch/stream processing, table formats, object storage, SQL.

• Understanding of security and governance, such as encryption, authentication, and access control.

• Practical experience with streaming and batch data (e.g., Kafka + Schema Registry).

• Experience making architectural decisions on IT solutions, system design & implementation.

• Excellent stakeholder communication.

You’ll join a culture of collaboration and excellence, where you’ll be surrounded by curious thinkers and creative problem solvers. Driven by a passion for continuous improvement, you’ll thrive in a supportive, high-performing environment alongside talented colleagues, working collectively to tackle some of the most complex problems in the financial markets.

In return for your expertise, you will have access to a range of Optiver perks, including:

• A performance-based bonus structure unmatched anywhere in the industry. We combine our profits across desks, teams and offices into a global profit pool, fostering a truly collaborative environment.

• The chance to work alongside diverse and intelligent peers in a rewarding environment.

• Training, mentorship and personal development opportunities.

• Daily breakfast, lunch and an in-house barista.

• Gym membership plus weekly in-house chair massages.

• Regular social events, including a company trip every two years.

• Guided relocation, a competitive relocation package and visa sponsorship where necessary

Optiver is committed to diversity and inclusion. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, and welcome requests for reasonable adjustments during the process.