Optiver Interview Guide: Options Market Making, Probability & Trading Speed

Optiver Interview Guide: Options Market Making, Probability, and Trading Speed

Optiver is one of the world’s leading proprietary options market makers. Founded in Amsterdam in 1986, the firm has grown into a multi-thousand-person global trading operation with offices in Amsterdam, Chicago, London, Sydney, Singapore, Mumbai, and Shanghai. For quant-trading candidates, Optiver is one of the most coveted destinations — high compensation, strong intellectual culture, and a clear focus on options market making at scale. This guide covers what Optiver’s interview looks like, how to prepare for each round, and how candidates win seats.

What Optiver Does

Optiver is a proprietary trading firm specializing in options market making across global exchanges. Unlike a hedge fund, Optiver doesn’t manage client money — it trades its own capital, providing liquidity (continuously quoting bid and offer prices) on listed options and related instruments. Profit comes from capturing bid-ask spreads while managing the various risks options exposure creates: directional, volatility, time-decay, and correlation.

The firm is famous for its trading-floor culture: traders sit in open-floor configurations, quote markets in real time, and constantly recalibrate prices as market conditions move. Speed of thought — both numerical and strategic — is core to the work, and the interview process is built to identify candidates who can perform under that kind of pressure.

Roles Optiver Hires For

Trader (graduate program)

The flagship role. New graduates enter a structured trader-training program (Optiver’s “Class”) in Amsterdam, Chicago, or Sydney. After several months of trading simulation, mock markets, and options theory, they’re placed on a trading desk and start quoting markets on live products. Pay is high; the interview process is correspondingly rigorous.

Quant Researcher

Builds trading models, signals, and pricing infrastructure for the trading desks. More math/programming heavy than the trader role; PhD-track candidates frequently end up here.

Software Engineer

Builds and maintains the trading systems — order entry, exchange connectivity, risk infrastructure, market-data pipelines. Optiver’s trading systems run at microsecond latency; SWE work is heavy on C++, low-level performance, and reliability under load.

Internships

Optiver runs internship programs for trading, quant research, and SWE roles, typically targeting students one year before graduation. Conversion to full-time is high for strong performers.

Optiver Interview Process

The trader-track interview is the most distinctive and is what most quant-finance candidates associate with the firm.

Round 1: Online assessment

Optiver’s “80 in 8” test is famous: 80 mental-arithmetic questions in 8 minutes. Questions involve fractions, decimals, percentages, multi-step arithmetic. Most candidates score 30–50; strong candidates score 60+. Practicing mental math is essential — this is a screening filter, and weak performance ends the process here.

Some candidates also see a short logic / sequencing test in this stage.

Round 2: First interview (phone or video)

Behavioral questions, motivation for trading, motivation for Optiver specifically, and probability brain teasers. The interviewer is often a recent-graduate trader or quant. Expect 2–4 brainteasers (coin flips, dice, expected value problems) plus discussion of your background.

Round 3: Technical interview (probability and market making)

Deeper probability problems, mental-math drills, and a market-making round where the interviewer sets up an unknown quantity and you quote two-sided markets while they trade against you. Examples:

“I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 100. Make a market on it.”
“I’ll roll three dice. Make a market on the sum.”
“What’s E[max(X, Y)] where X, Y are independent Uniform(0, 1)?”

Round 4: Trading game / Optiver Day

Top candidates are flown to Optiver’s office (Amsterdam, Chicago, or Sydney depending on which entity is hiring) for a full day. The day includes:

A live trading game (multi-round simulation where candidates quote markets, trade against each other, and manage positions in real time)
Multiple in-person interviews with senior traders
Behavioral / culture-fit conversations
Sometimes a presentation or case discussion

The trading game is the most distinctive piece. Candidates are observed for how they react to bad fills, how they update prices, whether they manage inventory, and whether they communicate clearly under pressure.

Round 5: Final / offer

Senior trader review. Brief interview, mostly culture-fit and confirmation. Decision usually within a few days.

What Optiver Tests For

Mental math

The 80-in-8 test is a hard filter. To get past it, you need to do basic arithmetic on fractions, decimals, and percentages with very little time per problem. This is a learnable skill; daily practice with mental-math drills (e.g., the “Optiver Math” practice apps, or just a stopwatch and a worksheet) is the only path.

Probability fluency

You must know: expected value, variance, conditional probability, geometric and binomial distributions, basic Bayesian updating, common brainteasers (Monty Hall, gambler’s ruin, simple martingale problems). You should be able to solve a moderately complex problem in 2–5 minutes verbally.

Market-making intuition

Quote a two-sided market on an unknown. Set spread proportional to uncertainty. Update on information. Adjust for inventory. Communicate reasoning out loud. This is the central skill; see Market-Making Interview Questions for a deeper walkthrough.

Composure under pressure

The trading game intentionally creates uncomfortable moments — fast pace, adversarial peers, bad fills, complex updates. Optiver wants candidates who keep thinking clearly when things go badly, not candidates who freeze or make panicked trades.

Curiosity about markets

Optiver values candidates with genuine interest in financial markets — how options work, how exchanges operate, how prices form. You don’t need a finance background, but you should be comfortable talking about why options pricing is interesting, what implied volatility is, and how market makers profit.

Preparation Strategy

Months -3 to -2 (mental math)

Daily mental-math practice. Aim for 30 minutes per day on percentages, fractions, multi-step arithmetic. Use timed drills. Goal: comfortably score 60+ on a mock 80-in-8.

Months -2 to -1 (probability and brainteasers)

Work through A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews (Xinfeng Zhou, “the green book”) and Heard on the Street (Timothy Falcon Crack). Focus on probability, expected value, and combinatorial problems. See also our guides on Probability Classics and Expected Value.

Month -1 (market making and options basics)

Read Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives (Hull) for options basics — understand calls, puts, put-call parity, Black-Scholes intuition (don’t memorize the formula; understand the inputs). Practice market-making mock rounds with a peer or a coach.

Final week

Mock interviews. Trading-game simulations if possible. Behavioral prep: why Optiver, why trading, what you’ve learned about markets recently.

Optiver vs Other Market-Making Firms

Optiver vs Jane Street: Optiver is more options-pure and trading-floor-cultural; Jane Street has a broader product mix (ETFs, equities, options, fixed income) and a more diverse engineering culture. Both are top-tier.

Optiver vs Citadel Securities: Citadel Securities is more diversified (equities, options, fixed income, FX) and more technology-driven; Optiver is more focused on options and more trader-driven. Compensation is comparable.

Optiver vs SIG: SIG (Susquehanna) has a stronger poker / decision-theory culture; Optiver has a stronger options-pricing-rigor culture. Both are similar in product focus.

Optiver vs IMC: IMC is similar to Optiver in style (Amsterdam-based, options-focused) and the two firms compete for similar talent. IMC is somewhat smaller.

Compensation

Optiver pays at the top of the market for trader-track new graduates: total comp typically lands in the $300,000–$500,000 range for first-year traders, with substantial upside in years 2+ as candidates take on more risk. Quant researcher and SWE compensation is similarly competitive, structured slightly differently (more salary, less variable). Bonuses are tied to firm performance and individual desk PnL.

Frequently Asked Questions

How hard is the 80-in-8 test?

Hard without practice; manageable with daily drills. Most untrained candidates score 20–40; strong prepared candidates score 55–70. The math itself is elementary — basic arithmetic, fractions, percentages — but the pace forces you to skip slow problems and pattern-match common operations. Practicing for 2–4 weeks before the test, with a focus on mental shortcuts (rounding, factoring, complementary fractions), is the standard preparation. Optiver publishes practice tests; use them.

Do I need a finance background to interview at Optiver?

No. Optiver hires from any quantitative discipline — math, physics, engineering, computer science, statistics, economics. What matters is quantitative aptitude, mental speed, and demonstrable interest in markets. You should know what options are, how a market maker makes money, and why volatility matters. You don’t need to have traded before or to know derivatives pricing in detail; that’s what the training program is for.

What’s the trading game like?

Multi-round simulation where 4–8 candidates quote two-sided markets on a fictional product (for example, a “color spinner” whose value is randomly drawn each round). Candidates trade with each other and with a market simulator, accumulate inventory, and try to end the round with maximum profit. Optiver observes how you set spreads, how you update on information, how you manage risk after bad trades, and how you communicate. It’s intentionally uncomfortable; that’s the point.

Where does Optiver hire? Is it different by office?

Optiver hires globally: Amsterdam (HQ), Chicago, Sydney, London, Singapore, Mumbai, Shanghai. The interview process is similar across offices; the trading game and final on-site happen in the office where you’d work. Compensation is competitive everywhere but adjusts for cost of living and tax. Amsterdam HQ has the largest Class program; Chicago has the second largest.

How does Optiver compare to working at a hedge fund?

Different products and time horizons. Optiver makes thousands to millions of trades per day, holding most positions for seconds to minutes; a hedge fund typically holds positions days to months. Optiver pays well but doesn’t manage client money, so there’s no marketing or client-facing work. Hedge funds offer more strategic flexibility (long/short equity, macro, credit, etc.); Optiver offers more focus on a single craft (options market making) and a tighter feedback loop on trading skill.