Maverick Derivatives

Maverick Derivatives is a proprietary trading firm founded in 2017 by a group of experienced high-frequency traders. The firm is headquartered in the World Trade Center in Amsterdam, with a second office in Singapore, and trades exclusively with its own capital.

Maverick focuses on volatility trading. Its traders run their own books in U.S. equity options, crypto options and delta one products, combining position-taking with market making. Most of the flow goes through U.S. exchanges (Maverick is a Cboe member through its U.S. broker-dealer entity) and a range of crypto exchanges. The firm builds its own trading software and takes a hands-on, data-driven approach: traders are expected to be comfortable with Python and SQL, and developers and traders sit on the same floor.

With roughly 50 to 75 people, Maverick is one of the smaller Amsterdam prop shops. That shows in the setup: a flat structure, no big hierarchy between trading, development and IT, and a culture the firm itself describes as open, casual and team-oriented, where ideas matter more than roles.

What Maverick Trades

• U.S. equity options: volatility trading on the major U.S. options exchanges.
• Crypto options: options and volatility strategies on crypto venues.
• Delta one products: ETFs, futures and other linear products, largely used alongside the options books.

Culture and Benefits

Maverick summarises its values as striving for excellence, taking ownership and sharing creativity. Traders are given responsibility for their own P&L early and are paid a base salary plus a performance-based profit share. Other benefits listed by the firm include 25 holidays with flexible public holidays, a personal development budget, contributions to health and disability insurance, public transport reimbursement, in-company Dutch classes, a workspace budget and a company sports programme.

Hiring at Maverick

Maverick hires in three ways: a nine-week summer trading internship in Amsterdam (starting in July, STEM background and Python required, SQL a plus), a twelve-week summer internship in Singapore (open to Singapore citizens and permanent residents), and experienced trader roles in Amsterdam for people with several years of options or delta one trading experience and a proven track record. Interns who do well are offered full-time Graduate Trader positions.

The selection process for the internship and graduate roles typically runs as follows:

• Online assessment (about 25 minutes): mental arithmetic, aptitude questions and a short programming test.
• Introductory interview (about 45 minutes): motivation, background and a first round of probability, options and market-intuition questions.
• Interview day at the office: shadowing the desk and several conversations with traders and team leads, followed by pre-employment screening.

Candidates consistently report that the assessment leans heavily on fast mental math (multi-digit addition, multiplication and division under time pressure), multiple-choice questions with negative marking, an open options question and a short coding section with a few easy-to-medium algorithm problems and one SQL exercise. Preparing for the mental math test and brushing up on options basics is the best use of your time before applying.