Experienced Options Trader
Posted Jul 27, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 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.
About your past
Walk me through a time you were managing a portfolio and the risk suddenly moved outside your limits. What did you do first?
What they are checking: 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?
What they are checking: 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?
What they are checking: 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?
What they are checking: 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.
What they are checking: 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?
What they are checking: track record of concrete, measurable contribution rather than vague claims of being analytical
What would you do
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?
What they are checking: 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.
What they are checking: 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?
What they are checking: ownership mentality and how they balance following firm process versus asserting their own risk judgment
About the work
How would you price a call option if implied vol is flat across strikes but you believe the skew should be steeper?
What they are checking: 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?
What they are checking: 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?
What they are checking: 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?
What they are checking: grasp of core market-making economics beyond textbook definitions
Practice this interview out loud.
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Practice this out loudThe full job description
As published by Akuna Capital.