Optiver
Quantitative Trader intern
Application
Trading and research share one application, and the offer can be for either. The assessment link arrives within a day or two of applying. You get one attempt every eight months across every office and role, and the score from an earlier attempt is reused rather than retaken, so the first sitting counts. Applications open on 1 July and the seats are filled by late October; the score needed for an interview rises as they fill.
Online assessment
Web form · About 2 hours, 6 modules
Six modules on Optiver's own assessment portal, each on its own clock, sat in order with breaks allowed between them and seven days to finish: probability against a 90-second clock, number sequences, ranking outcomes by likelihood, bracketing estimates with intervals, spotting arbitrage on boards of cards, and the Zap-N reaction games. The 80-questions-in-8-minutes arithmetic test is gone; the new modules test mental arithmetic inside the task instead. Everyone finishes every module, and no calculator is allowed.
beat the oddsSit this round →numberlogicSit this round →likelihood-listSit this round →intervalsSit this round →orderbooksSit this round →zap-nSit this round →Behavioural interview
Virtual interview · 30–60 min
A recruiter on Zoom: your CV line by line, why trading, why Optiver over other market makers, then pressure questions that chase the detail of whatever you just said. It is a real filter, and it is sometimes booked after the first cognitive interview instead of before it.
Sit this round →Cognitive interview 1
Virtual interview · 30–45 min
A trader on Zoom and a betting game on the assessment platform: a bankroll of $1,000 and, each round, boards of bets on coins, dice and cards at odds that change every round, plus a market on a three-card sum. A few bets are mispriced in your favour and some rounds hide an arbitrage. The first round gets about five minutes and later ones two, the trader asks why after each, and the rules tighten as the game goes on.
Sit this round →Cognitive interview 2
Virtual interview · 45–60 min
A second game on the platform with a trader: the total of nine cards, one of them yours, one held by each of four computer players and four turned over one at a time. The computer players quote markets every round and you take them for size or pass. Your position and P&L are not on the screen; the trader asks for them, and asks why at nearly every trade.
Sit this round →Final round
Virtual interview · 2 × 1 hour
Virtual, in two parts that can fall on different days. A live trading game in real time: you keep your own market up while cards turn, and offers pop up on a few seconds' clock. Then an hour with a senior trader and a recruiter that goes back through your motivation and your internships in more depth than the first behavioural, and turns candidates down who cleared every game.
trading gameSit this round →behaviouralSit this round →Decision
A call or an email within days. A rejection at any stage closes every Optiver role in every office for eight months. Interns who do well in the FutureFocus programme the year before skip most of this and go straight to an offer or the final round.
Reconstructed from first-hand candidate reports and the firm's own published material. Problems in this track are original and format-faithful; nothing is copied from a live interview.