FPGA Engineer Intern (Summer 2027 - Chicago)

As an FPGA Engineer Intern, you’ll work side-by-side with your mentor and teammates to build real-world applications that power a global trading firm. Your projects will be scoped based on your team’s real needs — not hypothetical tasks — and your mentor will be fully invested in helping you build high-quality solutions designed to last. You’ll contribute to meaningful projects focusing on nanosecond response times, highly parallelized algorithms, and customized low-level networking. Optiver is building with cutting edge AI technology in the most competitive, data rich landscapes in the world: financial markets. That means no two days are the same, and every day brings new, exciting technical challenges to solve. This opportunity is also available in our Austin office — learn more and apply. What you’ll do: Our internship is designed for fast thinkers with a critical mindset and a drive to solve tough problems. You’ll experience what it’s like to be a full-time engineer at a leading trading firm – working on projects that blend cutting-edge FPGA technology with real-world trading strategies, directly contributing to the efficiency and performance of our trading systems. Mentored by Optiver engineers, our program gives you the opportunity to: • 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: You’ll join a culture of collaboration and excellence, surrounded by curious thinkers and creative problem-solvers. Motivated by a passion for continuous improvement, you’ll thrive in a supportive, high-performing environment alongside talented colleagues, collectively tackling some of the toughest challenges in the financial markets. In addition, you’ll receive: • The opportunity to work alongside best-in-class professionals from over 40 different countries • A highly-competitive internship compensation package • Optiver-covered flights, living accommodations, and commuting stipends • Extensive office perks, including breakfast, lunch and snacks, regular social events, clubs, sporting leagues and more Who you are: • A student pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or another related field • On track to graduate between December 2027 to June 2028, with junior standing or higher • A student with strong engineering instincts and hands-on experience in digital design with FPGAs or ASICs • Experienced in writing hardware in VHDL, Verilog, or System Verilog • Passionate for writing clean code, well-architected systems, and continuous improvement • A collaborative teammate comfortable working with developers, traders and business teams Who we are: Optiver is a leading technology- and research-driven trading firm. Our teams of scientists, engineers, mathemat