MEET THE TEAM
MEET THE TEAM
The Development Team
Our Developers are motivated by solving difficult technical challenges in the trading industry and endless opportunities for innovation.
As a technology-driven company, our talented Developers and the code they write is at the core of everything we do. We have a fast-paced but collaborative environment, where Developers work closely with each other while also partnering with our Trading and Quant teams to rapidly iterate and deliver solutions on a daily basis.
We find creative ways to leverage cutting-edge technology and build advanced solutions that meet the performance and scalability demands of some of the most competitive trading environments around the globe.
JOINING THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM
We are always looking for Developers who are passionate about software craftsmanship and are motivated by delivering real business impact through their work.
Developers are typically placed in a small team, where you’ll begin with simple projects to help you get comfortable and familiarize yourself with the codebase and our overall systems architecture. As you build up experience and demonstrate your ability, you’ll be given increasing levels of responsibility to oversee even more complex projects. You’ll continue to be supported by experienced members of the team, while growing your role and impact here at Akuna.
The Quant Team
Our Quantitative Trading and Research Team designs algorithms and builds trading solutions.
This generally involves improving the intelligence of our system by adding new patterns and predicative signals so the system can better understand the markets while also engineering a robust system that eliminates the possibility for human error.
Our Quant team is made up of Quant Developers, Quant Researchers, Quant Strategists, and Quant Traders. These members combine their quantitative expertise with a sophisticated understanding of derivatives and financial markets to identify creative solutions, deploy them to the markets, and iterate on them quickly.
QUANT DEVELOPERS
Quantitative Developers make a direct and measurable impact on our trading decisions and performance. They use their strong programming background and familiarity with mathematical techniques to design and develop production code of trading strategies, analyze and incorporate market signals in our trading systems, advance our existing codebase, and propose new solutions and improvements.
QUANT RESEARCHERS
Comprised of mathematicians, statisticians and technologists, this team creates trading strategies scientifically by combining quantitative expertise with a sophisticated understanding of derivatives and financial markets.
QUANT STRATEGISTS
Quant Strategists use their strong programming background to identify and execute ideas to further automate our trading, quantify the expected and actual impact of innovations on our results, and develop and maintain ownership over automated trading strategies.
QUANT
TRADERS
The Quant Department has a specialized Quant Trading Team which works on the full spectrum of strategy development including hypothesis, analysis, back-testing, implementation, and trading. Quant Traders are creative thinkers who improve our profitability by converting ideas into quantitative models and strategies using Python programming skills, advanced mathematics and statistical analysis.
JOINING THE
QUANT TEAM
You do not need any prior experience in trading or finance to join our team. We value those who seek to discover the unknown, understand the seemingly incomprehensible, and who can critically examine the presumably well-understood.
Once you join the team you will be paired with a mentor who will help you not only grow your technical capabilities, but also gain the mental maturity to handle difficult situations both in trading and work life.
THE TRADING TEAM
Trading at Akuna means making hundreds of decisions a day.
Our Trading Team is responsible for the firm’s trading and risk management decisions on a day-to-day basis. Traders manage risk by reacting to new information in news, weather, interest rates, politics, the economy and much more.
Options Market Makers have a competitive drive and are motivated to succeed in the fast and challenging world of trading. This ambitious and bright team leverages our proprietary technology while implementing a variety of trading strategies and ideas to make an impact on the bottom line of the firm. Our Traders work together in teams and require strong communication and rapid mental math skills.
JOINING THE TRADING TEAM
New to the trading industry? No prior trading knowledge or experience is required for Junior Trader – Options Market Makers or Trading Interns. You’ll be immersed into the dynamic world of trading through an intensive group education program followed by rotations and mentorships.
The IT Infrastructure Team
The IT Infrastructure team achieves optimum technology performance by designing, owning and operating our systems for reliability and uptime across a highly distributed, ultra-low-latency system.
Our 24/7 trading plant is built to withstand unpredictable moments of volatility in historic market conditions, during which data throughput can peak to 10x times higher normal rates. Through these peaks, our trading systems need to be faster than those of our competitors without becoming prohibitively expensive to run.
The IT Infrastructure Team explores Infrastructure as Code management for configurations and automation of new systems while utilizing version control, testing, and rapid deployment—bringing the development lifecycle into IT.
JOINING THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE TEAM
As a member of the IT Infrastructure team, you’ll be introduced to a fast-paced, state of the art electronic trading environment while working side-by-side with some of the industry’s top IT talent.
You’ll collaborate with Developers, Quants and Traders to quickly gain a wide range of experience and have opportunities to exhibit your skills and innovation while working with non-GA hardware, aggressive app stacks, and 24/7 change pipelines.
GLOBAL TEAMS
AKUNA HEADQUARTERS
CHICAGO
Our Chicago office functions as Akuna’s Headquarters, we first opened our doors in the summer of 2011 and haven’t stopped growing since. We have representation across all of Akuna’s major business functions including Development, Quant, Trading, IT and Business Operations.
Our Chicago team trades significant market-share in listed derivatives across all major asset classes in the U.S. and directly competes with the largest market-making and arbitrage trading firms in the world.
AKUNA
Sydney
Akuna Sydney opened in 2018 and is the headquarters of Akuna’s Asia Pacific (APAC) trading operations. Akuna Sydney works together with our global offices to provide competitive markets on a variety of 24-hour assets.
Akuna Sydney operates across all areas of Akuna in trading, development, and research. It’s an exciting time at our Sydney office as we continue our expansion into local markets and launch new trading strategies. Our Sydney team is provided with new opportunities to grow their skills across trading and desk buildout, cutting-edge research and data analysis, strategy creation and building ultra-low-latency trading systems tailored to local market conditions.
AKUNA
Shanghai
Akuna Shanghai opened in 2014 as our first international office and focuses on research and development. Our Shanghai Quantitative Research team conducts cutting-edge research, creates trading strategies using statistical and machine learning algorithms, models, implements optimizations, and explores opportunities for new research. Our Shanghai Development team works with the latest hardware and software technologies to develop high performance, low latency solutions that are robust and scalable, ensuring our strategies are as fast as possible for Akuna’s global trading operations.
AKUNA
London
Akuna London opened in 2022 and is our newest addition as we continue to expand our global trading operations. Akuna London houses Trading and Quant Research teams, working to provide trading coverage and support between APAC and the US, as well as drive automation in our strategies. Our expansion into London is just the beginning and we are excited to explore other opportunities within this region.
