Optiver Risk Analyst Interview Questions
& Process

I applied in March 2023 and went through 5 rounds, reaching the final one. The whole thing took over a month. It started with an online assessment (numerical, deductive, inductive reasoning) where I needed over 90% to move on. Then, I had a quick chat with the recruiter. After that, I interviewed with the team lead for a technical interview. Next came a take-home case study and a Python test. The last stage was a 5-hour block with 4 interviews: 2 technical and 2 behavioral.

I was contacted by a recruiter and expressed my interest. The first step was a 40-minute phone interview where I was asked about market risk, options, and programming. The following week, I was flown to Chicago for an onsite interview. This included three tests: mental math, pattern recognition, and basic programming, which I felt I did very well on. After the tests, I had three interviews with members of the market risk department, followed by an interview with the CEO. I was confident I would get the job, but the recruiter informed me that the CEO felt I wasn't genuinely interested, despite my actual interest. I believe the CEO's decision-making should be reconsidered, as the market risk team and others seemed to find me a strong candidate, but one person's opinion held significant weight. This experience makes me question working for such a firm. A particularly unprofessional aspect was the company's dishonesty about getting back to me within a few days regardless of the decision. After more than a week and a half, I had to reach out to the recruiter, who then informed me they passed on me due to one person's opinion. It's highly unprofessional to leave a candidate waiting after promising a definite response and then not even contacting them directly.

I was really excited about my interview with Optiver as I had heard great things. My experience is not in markets so I was approaching this interview as an opportunity to learn more about the space and see if it would be a good option for a lateral move. My interview was supposed to be a 60 minute interview with two senior members of the risk team. My interviewer was 5 minutes late and was a junior member of the team - not either one of the team members the recruiter told me I would speak with. My total interview lasted maybe 25 minutes and consisted of the interviewer reading my resume to me and asking very surface level questions. It felt very strange and unscripted. I didn't have some of the technical experience they were looking for (which as stated previously makes sense because this would have been a lateral for me), but some points of the interview felt a bit degrading. Overall, I was pretty disappointed with my interview experience. The company seemed to be more focused on hiring people with a specific skill set rather than investing in interested candidates who maybe did not meet the exact hiring criteria.