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Junior Quantitative Developer & Strategist

Akuna Capital · Chicago, IL · Quant

Posted Jul 14, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026

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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

Tell me about a time you had to learn a completely unfamiliar subject fast in order to finish a project or assignment.

What they are checking: whether they can actually ramp up on financial markets given they're told no prior experience is required

Describe a situation where you disagreed with a teammate about the right technical approach. What happened?

What they are checking: how they handle friction on a small collaborative team of researchers, traders, and engineers

Tell me about a time you found a bug in code that wasn't yours. How did you track it down and what did you do next?

What they are checking: debugging discipline and whether they communicate issues responsibly rather than quietly patching

Tell me about a project you started that you ended up scrapping or significantly redesigning. What made you change course?

What they are checking: willingness to admit a wrong turn and iterate, relevant to a fast innovation cycle culture

What would you do

Imagine our trading system suddenly starts quoting prices that look wrong during a fast-moving market. What steps would you take in the moment?

What they are checking: composure and structured problem-solving under time pressure, since reacting fast and accurately is called out as essential

If a researcher hands you a pricing model in a Jupyter notebook and asks you to get it into production, what's your process for turning that into something reliable?

What they are checking: understanding of the researcher-to-production pipeline central to this specific role

About the work

Walk me through a coding project where you had to write production-quality code, not just a script that worked once. What made you treat it as production code?

What they are checking: whether the candidate understands the difference between quick prototyping and code others will depend on

Suppose you have a large array of option prices coming in every millisecond and you need to detect a mispricing before a competitor does. How would you think about designing that system in Python, knowing Python isn't the fastest language?

What they are checking: awareness of performance tradeoffs and whether they'd reach for vectorization, C extensions, or other speedups rather than naive loops

Explain object-oriented design to me using an example from something you've built, and tell me why you chose classes over just writing functions.

What they are checking: genuine grasp of OOP principles versus buzzword familiarity

Here's a matrix problem: if I asked you to find the best linear approximation to a noisy dataset using least squares, how would you set that up and solve it?

What they are checking: comfort with linear algebra fundamentals applied to a practical estimation problem

If I gave you a stream of stock prices and asked you to compute a rolling average efficiently as new data arrives, how would you approach it without recomputing the whole thing every time?

What they are checking: algorithmic thinking around incremental computation, relevant to low-latency trading systems

What's the difference between variance and standard deviation, and why would a trader care about one over the other when thinking about risk?

What they are checking: whether basic statistics is truly internalized and can be connected to a real trading use case

Have you worked with parallel or concurrent programming at all? Tell me about a case where running things in parallel actually mattered.

What they are checking: depth beyond the minimum bar, since parallel programming exposure is explicitly listed as a plus

Practice this interview out loud.

Offer builds a real interview for this exact role at Akuna Capital from your resume and this job description, asks the questions one at a time, and tells you what landed. The first one is free.

Practice this out loud

The full job description

As published by Akuna Capital.

About Akuna: Akuna Capital is an innovative 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 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, London, and Singapore. What you’ll do as a Junior Quantitative Developer & Junior Quantitative Strategist at Akuna: Akuna’s Quant team creates trading strategies scientifically by combining its quantitative expertise with sophisticated understanding of derivatives and financial markets. The team is looking to add both Junior Quant Developers and Junior Quant Strategists who will make a direct and measurable impact on our trading decisions and performance. We are searching for creative thinkers with strong programming backgrounds who can convert ideas into trading solutions, tighten our innovation cycle through rapid prototyping of performant production code, and have the desire to develop a deep understanding of financial markets. No prior experience with financial markets is required. In these roles you will: • Design and develop production code of trading strategies: pricing models, execution logic and performance optimization along with researchers, traders, and system engineers. • Analyze and incorporate market signals in our trading systems. • Advance existing codebase and propose new solutions and improvements. Qualities that make great candidates: • Bachelors, masters, or PhD degree in a technical field – Engineering, Computer Science, Math, Physics (or related subject) must be completed upon employment • Strong Python programming background • Experience in object-oriented programming • Exposure to linear algebra and introductory statistics • Desire and ability to learn the intricacies of financial markets • Must be graduating August 2027 or prior • GPA of 3.5 or above • Legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required on the first day of employment including F-1 students using OPT or STEM Additional qualities that make great candidates: • Experience with generic and/or parallel programming • Deeper understanding of any of the following fields: Linear Algebra, Numerical Methods, Statistics, Optimization, Signal Processing, Computer Architecture, Machine Learning, Heterogeneous/High Performance computing • The ability to react quickly and accurately to rapidly changing market conditions, including the ability to quickly and accurately respond and/or solve math and coding problems are essential functions of the role • Exposure to financial markets and trading **Resumes must be submitted in PDF format.  In addition to technical skillsets, Akuna values the unique perspectives people can bring to the table to collaboratively solve complex problems and drive Akuna forward. We want everyone to feel empowered to apply. We welcome your application and encourage you to take the first steps toward your future with us! Please note: By submitting an application to this role, you are indicating this is your top preference and acknowledge you will not be considered for other Quant and/or Tech roles at Akuna this recruiting season. This acknowledgement does not limit applications to Trading roles - in addition to this role, you may apply to any Trader roles of interest.  In accordance with Illinois Equal Pay Act, the minimum base salary starts at $145,000. Exact compensation offered may vary based on many factors including, but not limited to, the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and skill set. This role is also eligible for a discretionary performance bonus as part of the total compensation package and includes a comprehensive benefits package that may encompass employer-paid medical, dental, vision, retirement contributions, paid time off, and other benefits. The minimum base salary herein was determined in good faith by Akuna Capital LLC.

Apply at Akuna Capital