Enterprise Corporate Engineering Lead

What you'll do
You will establish Corporate Engineering as a new capability inside Optiver's Platform Engineering group and become the single point of accountability for our corporate technology stack. Reporting to the Head of Enterprise Platform, you will own the direction, the team, and the operating model.
The opportunity is broader than modernizing individual systems or automating existing processes. We believe AI will fundamentally change how our corporate functions contribute to the firm, and realizing that will mean redesigning important workflows from the ground up, establishing stronger foundations in data and technology, and creating new ways for business and engineering teams to work together. This is not about applying AI to inefficient processes and leaving them intact. It is about simplifying the underlying workflows so that people, data, software and agents can work together effectively.
The roadmap is set in partnership. Our corporate functions own the prioritization of the business problems worth solving and the transformation they want to lead. Corporate Engineering owns the technical solution, how it is built, and the architecture it fits into, and works alongside each function to shape where engineering effort goes so that it returns the most value. Making that partnership work is at the core of this role.
In this role you will:
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Define the technology vision and architecture for our corporate functions, and own the trade-offs across scalability, governance, security, cost and architectural consistency that span them and connect them to the wider Platform Engineering ecosystem.
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Set the engineering roadmap in partnership with the functions, translating the business priorities they own into a technical plan you own.
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Bring an engineering view of cost, feasibility and reuse into business prioritization, so each function can weigh what an outcome is worth against what it takes to build and run.
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Build and lead a high-caliber software engineering team, including hiring, performance, career development and delivery, based primarily in Amsterdam with distributed members in the US and APAC.
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Contribute materially to the software engineering output of the Corporate Engineering team.
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Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders in our business operations and support functions (e.g. finance, people, legal, and compliance).
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Make deliberate build versus buy decisions, with real engineering capacity behind the build option and a clear view of where a vendor platform is the right answer.
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Solve common problems once and reuse the solution, from knowledge bases and agent harnesses to integration and automation patterns shared across every corporate function.
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Partner closely with the Enterprise, Data and AI platform teams so that Corporate Engineering builds on existing Optiver building blocks instead of recreating them.
Success will mean measurably reducing the administrative and operational burden carried by our corporate functions, so that talented people spend their time on judgement, advice and decisions that directly enable the business. It will also mean an engineering organization that is trusted to turn complex corporate technology problems into scalable, well-designed solutions, repeatedly.
Who you are
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An experienced engineering leader who has built and grown strong software engineering teams, with a track record of hiring well and setting a high technical bar.
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Experienced leading complex transformation programs end to end, from problem definition through architecture, delivery and measurable business outcome.
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Credible with senior business leaders, with direct experience delivering technology and change to executive stakeholders in functions such as finance, people, legal or compliance.
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Strong in enterprise architecture across integration, orchestration, data and identity, with the judgement to know when to standardize and when a purposeful difference is justified.
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Deeply knowledgeable about AI, automation, data and process transformation, and specifically on what these mean in a corporate function context rather than in the abstract.
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Technically credible and comfortable staying close to production systems, architectural decisions and difficult delivery problems.
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Product-minded, able to distinguish the problem worth solving from the request that was made, and willing to say no when merited.
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Commercially grounded, able to connect technology decisions to cost, risk, opportunity and the time of the people the work is meant to free up.
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A strong communicator who can make complex technical matters clear to audiences with very different levels of technical depth.
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Comfortable building something new, including the ambiguity, the stakeholder management and the patience that a first year of a new team requires.
You are likely someone who has spent a significant part of your career close to complex systems rather than moving entirely away from technology as your leadership responsibilities grew. At the same time, you recognize that at this level your impact comes from the quality of the team you build, the decisions you enable others to make, and your ability to create alignment across a global organization.
Experience that helps
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Background in a technology company, a SaaS business serving finance, people or legal functions, or a large global enterprise with a mature internally facing engineering organization.
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Prior ownership of a corporate, enterprise, or business engineering function.
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Hands-on exposure to platforms such as Workday, NetSuite, Databricks, Workato, and to AI and automation toolsets.
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Experience building and operating agentic systems in production, including the knowledge, evaluation and governance foundations underneath them.
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Experience in financial services or another environment with a low tolerance for operational error
No prior trading or financial experience is needed – our onboarding program will kick-start your career at Optiver and support you in gaining all the relevant knowledge about our business.
Who we are
At Optiver, our mission is to constantly improve the market by injecting liquidity, providing accurate pricing, increasing transparency and acting as a stabilizing force no matter the market conditions. With a focus on continuous improvement, we participate in the safeguarding of healthy and efficient markets for everyone who participates. As one of the largest market making institutions, we are a trusted partner of 70+ exchanges across the globe.
What you'll get
You’ll join a culture of collaboration and excellence, where you’ll be 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, working collectively to tackle the toughest problems in the financial markets.
In addition, you’ll receive:
- 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 insurance, and fully paid first-class commuting expenses.
- Extensive office perks, including breakfast, lunch and dinner, world-class barista coffee, in-house physio and chair massages, organized sports and leisure activities, and Friday afternoon drinks.
- Training and continuous learning opportunities, including access to conferences and tech events.
How to apply
Apply directly via the form below. If you have any questions feel free to contact our Recruitment team via our recruitment inquiry form.
Please note:
- We do not require any assistance from third-parties including agencies in the recruitment of this role
- We cannot accept applications via email
Diversity statement
Optiver is committed to diversity and inclusion.