Graduate FPGA Engineer (2027 Start)

Academic Key; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 42,000 - 64,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

International team

Vacation days

Relocation package

Visa sponsorship

Commuting covered

Training opportunities

Job summary

Optiver in Amsterdam is seeking a Graduate FPGA Engineer (2027 Start) to work on real-time, nanosecond-scale hardware and low-latency networking alongside traders and engineers. You will join a Global Academy with mentoring, and contribute to impactful FPGA designs within a data-driven, international trading environment.

We welcome graduates with FPGA/ASIC academic experience and VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog skills, who are eager to learn and collaborate across disciplines.

Qualifications

• University degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering or Computer Engineering.
• Graduating between August 2024 and August 2027, with a maximum of 3 years of work experience.
• Academic design experience with FPGAs or ASICs.
• Academic experience in VHDL, Verilog, or SystemVerilog.
• An open, collaborative, self-critical attitude and willingness to learn from your mistakes.
• A desire to understand how the systems you build fit into our trading activities.

Responsibilities

• Accelerate network infrastructure and trading system components with high-speed hardware designs.
• Research new low-latency techniques and platforms and identify opportunities for integration with our trading system.
• Collaborate in a multidisciplinary team of traders, software developers, and infrastructure engineers.
• Leverage the best hardware available or build in-house versions to ensure our FPGAs can interface with cutting-edge server hardware.

Skills

Collaboration

Willingness to learn

Open attitude

Education

University degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering or Computer Engineering

Tools

VHDL

Verilog

SystemVerilog

Job description

Graduate FPGA Engineer (2027 Start)

Optiver · Amsterdam

What you’ll do

As an FPGA Engineer, you'll work side-by-side with teammates to build real-world applications that power a global trading firm. You'll create solutions with nanosecond response times, highly parallelised algorithms, and customised low-level networking that solve business challenges effectively and efficiently. Collaborating closely with our business, you'll have in-depth insight into a problem before developing the solution. Optiver is building with cutting-edge AI technology in the most competitive, data-rich landscapes in the world: financial markets. Our FPGA engineers use AI to speed up verification, debugging, and technical research, while retaining full ownership of the designs and decisions it supports.

Your onboarding

You will participate in Optiver's comprehensive Global Academy and be equipped with the knowledge needed to make an impact the moment you join your team. The comprehensive training covers trading theory and Optiver's tech stack to hone your skills for your role. In addition, you will be paired with a dedicated mentor who will empower you to take ownership of your work and make a difference.

Your responsibilities

• Accelerate network infrastructure and trading system components with high-speed hardware designs.
• Research new low-latency techniques and platforms and identify opportunities for integration with our trading system.
• Collaborate in a multidisciplinary team of traders, software developers, and infrastructure engineers.
• Leverage the best hardware available or build in-house versions to ensure our FPGAs can interface with cutting-edge server hardware.

What you’ll get

• A performance-based bonus structure, enabling all of our employees to benefit from our global profit pool.
• The opportunity to work alongside best-in-class professionals from over 50 different countries.
• 25 paid vacation days in your first year, increasing to 30 from your second year onwards.
• Training opportunities, discounts on health benefits, and fully paid first-class commuting expenses.
• Extensive office perks, including breakfast, lunch and dinner, world-class barista coffee, sport and leisure activities, bi-weekly massages and Friday afternoon drinks.
• Training and continuous learning opportunities.
• International transfer opportunities for global career growth.
• Competitive relocation packages and visa sponsorship where necessary for expats.

Who you are

• University degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Computer Engineering or similar, with outstanding academic achievements.
• Graduating between August 2024 and August 2027, with a maximum of 3 years of work experience.
• Academic design experience with FPGAs or ASICs.
• Academic experience in VHDL, Verilog, or SystemVerilog.
• An open, collaborative, self-critical attitude and willingness to learn from your mistakes.
• A desire to understand how the systems you build fit into our trading activities.
• Able to work closely with other engineers, traders, and business operations.

Optiver is committed to diversity and inclusion. We encourage applications from candidates from any and all backgrounds, and we welcome requests for reasonable adjustments during the process to ensure that you can best demonstrate your abilities. Please let us know if you would like to request any reasonable adjustments by contacting the Recruitment team via the contact form, selecting "Reasonable Adjustments" as the subject of your inquiry.

For applicants based in India, our entry route is via the placement office internship hiring season (July/August). Optiver has a global application re-apply policy for our intern and graduate roles. If you have completed an online assessment or interviewed for a technology graduate or internship role at any Optiver location in the past 8 months, please note that you are not yet eligible to re-apply. We welcome you to re-apply.

Academic Key will never request login credentials or application fees for this role.