The Wolverine Trading Interview Process

Wolverine Trading's options market making business shapes an interview built around mental math, Greeks intuition, and a live trading simulation.

Wolverine Trading hires traders and engineers through a process built around a timed mental math and probability test, one or two rounds discussing options pricing and market making, and a final round that often includes a live or simulated trading exercise. Founded in Chicago in 1994, Wolverine Trading has operated as an options market maker for three decades, and its interviews reflect that focus more directly than firms with a broader multi-asset business.

Wolverine Trading makes markets primarily in listed equity options, along with related products such as ETFs and futures, on major derivatives exchanges. Its edge sits in continuously quoting theoretical prices across large option chains and managing the resulting portfolio of Greeks as the underlying moves, a task that rewards speed and accuracy in options pricing math over broad statistical modeling.

The firm also operates Wolverine Execution Services, an agency brokerage under the same holding company, which means some engineering and operations roles sit closer to trade execution infrastructure than to the proprietary trading desks.

Candidates typically begin with an online application and a timed mental math and probability assessment, since options market making depends on fast, accurate arithmetic under pressure. A first-round interview, often with a trader, walks through basic options concepts such as delta, gamma, and how a market maker adjusts a quote as the underlying price moves.

Later rounds commonly include a live or paper trading simulation, where candidates make markets on simplified instruments and are graded on how sensibly they price and manage risk rather than on the outcome of any single trade. A final round typically brings in senior traders and sometimes a partner, focused on judgment under pressure and fit with the firm's trading floor culture.