About Da Vinci Derivatives
Da Vinci Derivatives is an Amsterdam-headquartered options market maker founded in 2015. Despite being younger than IMC or Optiver, Da Vinci has scaled fast across European, Asian, and US derivatives venues. The firm is known for an entrepreneurial, founder-led culture — flat hierarchy, lots of ownership for new traders, and a strong engineering org.
For current openings see our Da Vinci listings.
Interview Process
- Online assessment: probability and math, timed
- First-round interview: probability puzzles and a short market-making exercise
- Final round: two or three interviews on-site in Amsterdam (or virtual), covering trading, behavioral, and a deeper market-making game
Probability and Quick Thinking
Da Vinci's quant questions are similar to other Dutch market makers — coin flip and dice puzzles, conditional probability, expected value problems with adversarial structure. They reward candidates who can talk through their reasoning out loud while computing.
Market-Making Game
Like Optiver and IMC, Da Vinci runs a market-making game. The structure is typically: a hidden quantity (e.g., a number drawn from a known distribution) and you must quote a two-way market. Trades reveal information; you update your quote each round. They evaluate spread tightness, inventory management, and how you respond to a "trap" round designed to exploit lazy reasoning.
Mental Math
Speed matters — practice multiplying two-digit numbers, computing percentages, and converting fractions to decimals fluently. Da Vinci's bar isn't quite as high as Optiver's but it's still demanding.
Behavioral
The culture rewards curiosity and ownership. Expect questions about a time you took initiative on something outside your role, what you've taught yourself recently, and how you handle being wrong. Mentioning quant or markets-related side projects helps a lot.
How to Prepare
- Sharpen mental math fluency — use our mental math game
- Practice market-making rounds in our card-counting game
- Read up on options basics — calls, puts, payoffs, the greeks at an intuitive level
- Have a project or piece of self-directed work you can talk about for 5 minutes