About Akuna:

Akuna Capital is a young and booming trading firm with a strong focus on collaboration, cutting-edge technology, data driven solutions and automation. We specialize in providing liquidity as an options market maker – meaning we are committed to providing competitive quotes that we are willing to both buy and sell. To do this successfully we design and implement our own low latency technologies, trading strategies and mathematical models.

Our Founding Partners, including Akuna’s CEO Andrew Killion, first conceptualized Akuna in their hometown of Sydney. They opened the firm’s first office in 2011 in the heart of the derivatives industry and the options capital of the world – Chicago. Today, Akuna is proud to operate from additional offices in Sydney, Shanghai, and Boston.

What you’ll do as a Junior Trader at Akuna:

We are seeking bright, math-savvy, competitive, and ambitious Junior Traders with a strong desire to learn how to make markets in a rapidly growing trading firm. Akuna gives new Traders the opportunity to learn from the most successful members of our Trading team and apply their knowledge quickly. The ideal candidate will be a motivated individual with a desire to compete in the marketplace and make an immediate impact at a growing firm. Candidates can choose to apply for either our Junior Trader – Options Market Maker or Junior Execution Trader roles. 

• Junior Trader – Options Market Maker: As a Junior Trader on our Options Market Making team, we’ll teach you how to leverage our proprietary technology while implementing a variety of trading strategies and ideas, so you can get on the trading screens and make an impact on the bottom line of the firm. The ideal candidate displays strong mental math and excellent communications skills and is interested in being a part of a fast-paced and collaborative team environment.
• Junior Execution Trader: As a Junior Execution Trader, you will help represent Akuna in this outwardly facing role by taking responsibility for expanding and managing your desk’s broker relationships. The role requires both relationship-building and ownership of Akuna’s exposure to these relationships. A strong Execution Trader will have an immediate impact on desk profitability by creating new revenue streams, researching counterparty trends and positional exposure, analyzing counterparty trade quality, updating Akuna’s pricing and parameters to reflect relevant trading flow, and making recommendations to the desk surrounding Akuna’s positional management. You will interact daily with a variety of counterparties, including large institutional brokerage houses, direct end users in the OTC market and floor brokers at the various exchanges in Chicago and New York, all while simultaneously communicating effectively with the rest of the trading team in a dynamically changing marketplace.

*Please note both positions are for candidates looking for a start date in January 2022 or August 2022 (i.e. those with graduation dates of Dec 2021 or May 2022). This is not for immediate hire.

Qualities that make great candidates:

• BS/MS/ PhD degree in Engineering, Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Actuarial Science or a related/equivalent field must be completed upon employment
• Available to start in January or August 2022
• Strong math aptitude, numerical and quantitative analysis skills
• The ability to communicate effectively and efficiently while fostering external professional relationships
• Entrepreneurial self-starter ready to work in a fast paced and competitive team environment
• Desire to learn about financial markets and economic theories
• Programming experience preferred
• Major GPA of 3.0 or above
• Legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required on the first day of employment including F-1 students using OPT, TN, or STEM