Akuna Capital jobs, judged for you, free

What they do

Akuna Capital is a proprietary trading firm that makes markets in options. It offers prices at which it will both buy and sell, and so gives the market liquidity. Akuna builds its own fast trading systems, strategies, and mathematical models. It trades only with its own money and has no clients or outside investors. It opened in Chicago in 2011.

What they value

• Collaboration: people work as a team.
• New ideas: people get the power to turn them into impact.
• A flat structure, where the best idea wins.
• Ownership: top performers can earn a share of the firm.
• Shared knowledge, through the internal Akuna U talks and workshops.

Where they hire

Most roles are in Chicago (21 of 31). Others are in Shanghai, Sydney, London, and Singapore. One platform engineer role can be remote or hybrid from Chicago. No other posting names a remote policy. Eight US early-career roles need the right to work in the US on day one. F-1 students with OPT can apply. No posting mentions visa sponsorship.

Teams and roles

Technology has 14 roles, quant has nine, and trading has five.

• Technology: C++ software engineers who build the options trading platform, platform engineers for Kubernetes and the cloud, systems engineers for Linux servers, a performance engineer, and a data engineer.
• Quant: quantitative researchers who build trading strategies with statistics and machine learning, quant developers, and quant strategists. One Shanghai role works on deep learning for time series data.
• Trading: junior traders, an experienced options trader, a floor trader for S&P 500 index options (SPX), and an equity analyst.
• Early careers: junior roles in Chicago and Shanghai, and summer 2027 internships in Chicago.

The Singapore office opened in 2024. Its one role is a systems engineer. Most US roles give a minimum base salary, usually $145,000.

What they look for

Most roles ask for a degree in a technical field, such as computer science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, or physics. Software engineer roles ask for three or more years of modern C++, and Linux and Python. Platform and systems roles ask for three to six years with Linux, Kubernetes, and Terraform. Quant roles ask for statistics, machine learning, and Python. Some quant roles do not need financial experience.

Early-career roles ask for a GPA of 3.5 or above. Most roles say that you must react fast to changing markets and solve math and coding problems quickly.