Linux SRE

Optiver - Chicago, IL

Full-time - Mid Level

Chicago, IL

Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities

About the position

The Optiver Linux Systems Engineering Team is dedicated to ensuring that our trading servers operate seamlessly, enabling us to trade effectively. As a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) within this team, you will be immersed in a highly-customized bare metal environment where proprietary tools and technology function at breakneck speed. Your primary responsibility will be to help build pioneering tools that maintain our systems at a best-in-class level while facilitating our technology evolution in a controlled manner. In this role, you will ensure that our production environment operates optimally by designing, deploying, monitoring, and managing a large fleet of predominantly bare-metal UNIX servers. At Optiver, reliability is paramount; it involves both the prevention and swift resolution of incidents across our technology stack to guarantee optimal functioning, even under extreme market conditions. A decisive nature, an engineering mindset, and a preference for simple solutions are essential traits for maintaining the reliability of our systems. Your responsibilities will include performance monitoring and managing system capacity, tackling the life cycle of servers, building and deploying new solutions, fixing and analyzing technical incidents, and leading our charge towards intelligent automation. You will serve as the vital connection between hardware and software, researching new technologies and solutions, implementing them, or building better alternatives. Optiver is a tech-driven trading firm and a leading global market maker, trusted by over 70 exchanges worldwide. Our mission is to enhance the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency, and acting as a stabilizing force regardless of market conditions. With a focus on continuous improvement, we contribute to the safeguarding of healthy and efficient markets for all participants. The culture at Optiver Chicago reflects the energetic spirit of the city, which is home to major trading institutions and has established itself as the trading capital of the US. Our Chicago office actively trades a diverse range of products, including listed derivatives, cash equities, ETFs, bonds, and foreign exchange.

Responsibilities

• Performance monitoring and managing the system capacity.
• Tackle the life cycle of a server and build and deploy new solutions.
• Fix and analyze technical incidents, solve technical ad hoc problems.
• Lead our charge to intelligent automation.
• Be the connection between hardware and software.
• Research new technologies and solutions, implement them or build better.

Requirements

• A minimum of 6 years experience designing, deploying and supporting large scale Linux/Unix server environments.
• Good knowledge of Linux Kernel internals.
• Solid coding skills in Python and a strong desire to automate.
• Experience within a high-performance computer environment where the result matters.
• Infrastructure-as-Code with an Ansible flavor.
• A focus on reliability, monitoring and scaling Linux environments.
• Knowledge of virtualization and networking.
• A proactive approach to problem solving.
• Ability to clearly explain thoughts through written and verbal communication.

Nice-to-haves

• A developer mindset to help build the right tools for continual improvement.
• Naturally curious about hardware and software, and how these interact.
• Seek out opportunities to leave your comfort zone and enjoy frequent change.

Benefits

• 25 paid vacation days and market holidays.
• Fully-paid health insurance.
• Daily breakfast and lunch.
• Training opportunities.
• 401(k) match up to 50%.
• Charitable match opportunities.
• Regular social events and clubs.