Experienced Options Trader
Posted Jul 27, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Sep 20, 2026
Likely interview questions for this role
Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.
Behavioral
Walk me through a time you were managing a portfolio and the risk suddenly moved outside your limits. What did you do first?
whether the candidate has real hands-on risk management discipline under pressure, not just theoretical knowledge
Tell me about a trade or position that lost money. What was the actual mistake, and what changed afterward?
honesty about failure and whether they extract real process improvements rather than blaming the market
Tell me about a time you disagreed with a quant or engineer about how an algorithm was behaving. How did you resolve it?
ability to work cross-functionally with tech and quant teams without ego getting in the way
Describe a market condition where you had to react faster than your normal process allowed. How did you decide what to trust and what to ignore?
judgment under time pressure and comfort making decisions with incomplete information
Tell me about a time you had to explain a technical or quantitative issue to someone without your math background, maybe a counterparty or a less technical colleague.
communication skill, since the role requires fostering external professional relationships
What's an improvement you've made to a trading process or algorithm in a past role, even a small one, and how did you measure whether it worked?
track record of concrete, measurable contribution rather than vague claims of being analytical
Technical
How would you price a call option if implied vol is flat across strikes but you believe the skew should be steeper?
depth of options pricing intuition and volatility surface understanding, not just formula recall
If a delta-neutral book suddenly starts bleeding gamma losses on small moves, what are the likely culprits you'd check first?
practical debugging instinct for a trading book, connecting greeks to real P&L behavior
Quick one: if you're short 500 calls with a delta of 0.4 each, how many shares do you need to hedge delta-neutral, and what does your gamma exposure look like as the stock moves toward the strike?
speed and accuracy doing options math under time pressure, mirroring the job's real-time demands
How do you think about the tradeoff between tightening quotes to win flow and widening them to protect against adverse selection?
grasp of core market-making economics beyond textbook definitions
Situational
Say you're quoting options on an underlying that just gapped 3 percent on news. Your model hasn't updated yet. What do you do in the next ten seconds?
instinct for handling stale model risk and fast-moving markets before systems catch up
You notice one of the firm's market-making algorithms is quoting wider than competitors in a liquid name. Walk me through how you'd investigate and what you'd propose changing.
ability to diagnose and improve algorithmic quoting parameters, a core listed responsibility
If you inherited a book from another trader and found their risk limits were set more loosely than you'd normally run, what would you do in the first week?
ownership mentality and how they balance following firm process versus asserting their own risk judgment
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As published by Akuna Capital.
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