Optiver

Software Engineer (Internship) Interview Experience - Sydney, Australia

March 8, 2026

Neutral ExperienceGot Offer

Process

Difficult OA. Design question. Included min/max heap with lazy deletion + fib number sequencing + hashmaps all in one question. Easy technical in comparison. Just don't stop typing during the OA and make sure to read everything carefully.

Questions

Difficult OA. Design question. Included min/max heap with lazy deletion + fib number sequencing + hashmaps all in one question. Easy technical in comparison. Just don't stop typing during the OA and make sure to read everything carefully.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 3 interview experiences for the Optiver Software Engineer (Internship) role in Sydney, New South Wales.

Success Rate

0%

Pass Rate

Optiver's interview process for their Software Engineer (Internship) roles in Sydney, New South Wales is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive67%

Neutral33%

Negative0%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Optiver's Software Engineer (Internship) interview process in Sydney, New South Wales.

Optiver Work Experiences

Double-edged sword

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

September 1, 2024

Pros: A good learning experience with lots of hands-on projects. It can give you a good career in the HFT field in the long term. It is obviously very well-paid despite being stressful.

Cons: Extremely stressful. Competitive internally. Lots of layoffs for employees with no career growth, especially those that have been around for longer than 3 years without a plan to become a senior developer. Direct feedback culture can be seen as toxic. Hire too much in the short term and now the growth does not cover the cost anymore. Be careful to join as a new grad.

Double-edged sword

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

September 1, 2024

Pros: A good learning experience with lots of hands-on projects. It can give you a good career in the HFT field in the long term. It is obviously very well-paid despite being stressful.

Cons: Extremely stressful. Competitive internally. Lots of layoffs for employees with no career growth, especially those that have been around for longer than 3 years without a plan to become a senior developer. Direct feedback culture can be seen as toxic. Hire too much in the short term and now the growth does not cover the cost anymore. Be careful to join as a new grad.

Great Food, Toxic Culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Pros: Delicious, healthy, free food. Almost too good to be true. Good salary growth. Young, energetic co-workers.

Cons: Managers who aren't interested in people skills. Toxic, competitive culture. Long hours, due to the competitive culture, and projects are understaffed. Low job security, as management often fires people, leading to understaffed projects. Poor opportunities for women. Management stated that "addressing gender equity in hiring is not a priority". An employee rubbed feces on the bathroom wall.

Great Food, Toxic Culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Pros: Delicious, healthy, free food. Almost too good to be true. Good salary growth. Young, energetic co-workers.

Cons: Managers who aren't interested in people skills. Toxic, competitive culture. Long hours, due to the competitive culture, and projects are understaffed. Low job security, as management often fires people, leading to understaffed projects. Poor opportunities for women. Management stated that "addressing gender equity in hiring is not a priority". An employee rubbed feces on the bathroom wall.

Autonomy, But Job Security Concerns

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Pros: Interesting problems, you get opportunities that are hard to get in other companies if you take the initiative for them. Juniors are given a lot of autonomy over their work.

Cons: cutting costs lately. There's a decent risk of getting fired if you're not meeting the increasingly high bar.

Autonomy, But Job Security Concerns

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Pros: Interesting problems, you get opportunities that are hard to get in other companies if you take the initiative for them. Juniors are given a lot of autonomy over their work.

Cons: cutting costs lately. There's a decent risk of getting fired if you're not meeting the increasingly high bar.

Double-edged sword

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

September 1, 2024

Pros: A good learning experience with lots of hands-on projects. It can give you a good career in the HFT field in the long term. It is obviously very well-paid despite being stressful.

Cons: Extremely stressful. Competitive internally. Lots of layoffs for employees with no career growth, especially those that have been around for longer than 3 years without a plan to become a senior developer. Direct feedback culture can be seen as toxic. Hire too much in the short term and now the growth does not cover the cost anymore. Be careful to join as a new grad.

1.0
Double-edged sword
Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
September 1, 2024
Pros: A good learning experience with lots of hands-on projects. It can give you a good career in the HFT field in the long term. It is obviously very well-paid despite being stressful.
Cons: Extremely stressful. Competitive internally. Lots of layoffs for employees with no career growth, especially those that have been around for longer than 3 years without a plan to become a senior developer. Direct feedback culture can be seen as toxic. Hire too much in the short term and now the growth does not cover the cost anymore. Be careful to join as a new grad.

Great Food, Toxic Culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Pros: Delicious, healthy, free food. Almost too good to be true. Good salary growth. Young, energetic co-workers.

Cons: Managers who aren't interested in people skills. Toxic, competitive culture. Long hours, due to the competitive culture, and projects are understaffed. Low job security, as management often fires people, leading to understaffed projects. Poor opportunities for women. Management stated that "addressing gender equity in hiring is not a priority". An employee rubbed feces on the bathroom wall.

3.0
Great Food, Toxic Culture
Software Engineer • Former Employee
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
August 8, 2020
Pros: Delicious, healthy, free food. Almost too good to be true. Good salary growth. Young, energetic co-workers.
Cons: Managers who aren't interested in people skills. Toxic, competitive culture. Long hours, due to the competitive culture, and projects are understaffed. Low job security, as management often fires people, leading to understaffed projects. Poor opportunities for women. Management stated that "addressing gender equity in hiring is not a priority". An employee rubbed feces on the bathroom wall.

Autonomy, But Job Security Concerns

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Pros: Interesting problems, you get opportunities that are hard to get in other companies if you take the initiative for them. Juniors are given a lot of autonomy over their work.

Cons: cutting costs lately. There's a decent risk of getting fired if you're not meeting the increasingly high bar.

3.0
Autonomy, But Job Security Concerns
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
July 4, 2024
Pros: Interesting problems, you get opportunities that are hard to get in other companies if you take the initiative for them. Juniors are given a lot of autonomy over their work.
Cons: cutting costs lately. There's a decent risk of getting fired if you're not meeting the increasingly high bar.

Optiver Interview Questions

Number of Days Between Two Dates

Calculate the number of days between two given dates. The dates are provided in a specific format, and you need to compute the difference in days.

LRU Cache

Design a data structure that acts as a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache. Implement methods to get and put key-value pairs, evicting the least recently used entry when the cache is full.

Design Circular Queue

Implement a circular queue data structure with a fixed size. You'll need to handle enqueueing, dequeueing, and checking if the queue is full or empty efficiently.

ArraysTwo PointersSliding Windows

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