Head of Infrastructure

At Optiver we are hiring the Head of Infrastructure (APAC) — a senior engineering leader and the primary regional partner to the APAC CTO and Global Head of Infrastructure. You will lead APAC infrastructure engineering capability: setting regional priorities, validating regional architectures, and ensuring the region delivers resilient, reliable, low-latency infrastructure.

This role requires both engineering pedigree and strong operational judgement. You will set regional priorities and outcomes, and you will guide, shape and assure delivery from globally managed and local teams so those outcomes are met. You will influence and validate technical designs to ensure they are fit for APAC constraints, hold teams and partners accountable for execution, and orchestrate escalations where needed. Above all, you will translate firm and APAC priorities into delivered outcomes while maintaining stakeholder confidence — making pragmatic trade-offs between latency, resilience, risk, cost and time-to-market.

WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS

In HFT, infrastructure is a competitive edge — small gains in latency, reliability or time to market directly affect success. Done well, the Head of Infrastructure (APAC) ensures regional engineering delivers the resilient platforms that improve execution, reduce risk and enable rapid delivery: you’ll set regional priorities, convene and hold teams and suppliers to account, and assure technical delivery (architectures, handoffs, major projects).

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Act as the APAC Infrastructure leader: own APAC outcomes, escalations, decisions and cross-team delivery while partnering with the APAC CTO and Global Head of Infrastructure.

• Ensure coherent regional delivery from globally managed teams: define and run the operating cadence, set and enforce SLAs/OKRs, remove cross-team blockers, and coordinate delivery across time zones and geographies.

• Translate strategy into delivery: convert firm and APAC business priorities into clear infrastructure outcomes, term plans and measurable delivery commitments.

• Be the escalation owner: own APAC-level incident and change escalation, shape postmortems and remediation, and ensure robust assurance over change & configuration controls and site resilience.

• Manage the APAC operating rhythm & org leadership: set cadence, delegate effectively, hold leaders accountable, and continuously improve the region’s practices so work becomes repeatable and handover to BAU is clear.

• Partner with other regional leads: work with EU, US and other regional leads to converge regional processes into global ones, share best practices, highlight regional constraints, and ensure global standards and tooling are fit-for-purpose in APAC.

• Mentor and develop senior technical talent: coach senior engineers and engineering managers on leadership, operations and communication; promote psychological safety and an engineering culture of ownership and long-term thinking.

• Build and maintain durable stakeholder relationships: engage business, engineering and global counterparts; provide executive-ready communication of status, risk, decisions and asks.

• Take responsibility for regional talent strategy: identify leadership and performance gaps and define regional headcount and senior-hire priorities in partnership with global leads and the HRBP. Global teams will continue to own their pipelines and bench development; you will provide regional assurance, influence hiring prioritisation, and step in to recruit or accelerate capability where regional delivery requires it.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The APAC Infrastructure function operates across Sydney, Shanghai, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Japan, and is responsible for the infrastructure foundations we build and deploy our trading and non-trading environments on. You will work with globally managed engineering teams, APAC infrastructure leaders, and partner extensively with global infrastructure teams.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

• Strong engineering pedigree: hands-on technical experience and proven architecture/engineering leadership – preferably in infrastructure engineering and/or latency-sensitive systems.

• Experience leading engineering functions at Head/Director level, defining technical roadmaps, establishing standards and growing engineering teams.

• Operational judgement: able to balance engineering quality with operational reliability and business timelines.

• Executive-level stakeholder skills and the ability to represent the region in global technical discussions.

• Experience operating in a matrix organisation and coordinating delivery from globally managed and highly distributed teams across multiple countries and timezones.

• A builder mindset: a record of driving standardisation, automation and turning bespoke solutions into durable engineering practices.

• Willingness to travel: this role requires approximately 4 weeks of travel per year across the US, Europe, and APAC.

WHAT YOU’LL GET

• A performance-based bonus structure unmatched anywhere in the industry. We combine our profits across desks, teams and offices into a global profit pool, fostering a truly collaborative environment.

• The chance to work alongside diverse and intelligent peers in a rewarding environment.

• Training, mentorship and personal development opportunities.

• Daily breakfast, lunch and an in-house barista.

• Gym membership plus weekly in-house chair massages.

• Regular social events, including a company trip every two years.

• Guided relocation, a competitive relocation package and visa sponsorship where necessary.

DIVERSITY STATEMENT

Optiver is committed to diversity and inclusion. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, and welcome requests for reasonable adjustments during the process.

Questions? Get in touch with the recruitment team at careers@optiver.com.au.

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Head of Infrastructure