Career Kickstarter - Tech

OptiverAmsterdamOn-siteVolunteer29 Sept 2026

Optiver is hosting a five-day, all-expenses-paid Career Kickstarter: Tech program at its Amsterdam headquarters for students eager to explore engineering challenges in mission-critical trading systems. Participants will engage in hands-on coding, system design workshops, and a collaborative engineering project, with top performers considered for a direct offer as a Graduate Software Engineer.

What you'll do

Work on a real engineering project that challenges you to design, build and iterate as part of a real engineering team.
Join lectures and panel sessions with senior engineers to explore potential career paths and understand how real systems are designed, built and improved.
Take part in system design workshops to learn how high-performance systems are architected, optimised and scaled.
Use the same AI tools, platforms and workflows as our engineering teams to navigate real codebases and datasets, test ideas and move faster - while applying your own judgment and owning the outcome.
Demonstrate your potential during the program, and you may be considered for a direct offer to join Optiver as a Graduate Software Engineer.

What you need

Must-have

C++PythonJavaComputer ArchitectureAlgorithmsMemory ModelsConcurrency ModelsCPU Architecture

Soft skills

CuriosityCollaborationProblem-solvingWillingness to learn

EngineeringTechnologyFinancial ServicesTrading SystemsGraduate ProgramAmsterdamC++PythonJavaStudent Program

/What you'll do

/What you need

Must-have

Soft skills

What you'll do

What you need