Jobs › Akuna Capital

Software Engineer (Entry-Level) - C++

Akuna Capital · Chicago, IL · Engineering

Posted Aug 31, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Sep 20, 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.

Behavioral

Tell me about a time you had to make a piece of code faster. How did you figure out where the actual bottleneck was?

whether the person profiles before optimizing or just guesses and hopes

Describe a project where you had to design something from scratch rather than modify existing code. What tradeoffs did you weigh?

appetite and readiness for the 'building complex systems from the ground up' part of the role

Tell me about a time you disagreed with a teammate about how to implement something. What happened?

how the candidate collaborates across different skill levels and handles friction on small teams

Tell me about a time something you built broke in a way you didn't expect. What did you do right after you found out?

ownership and composure under pressure, since the role explicitly requires reacting fast to changing conditions

What's a technical topic outside your comfort zone that you've had to teach yourself recently, and how did you go about it?

capacity to self-onboard into finance and markets given the role explicitly hires people with no prior trading background

Technical

Walk me through the difference between a mutex and an atomic operation. When would you reach for one over the other in a multithreaded C++ program?

whether the candidate actually understands concurrency primitives at a level deeper than textbook definitions

Say you have a lock-free queue that's being written to by one thread and read by another. What are the pitfalls you need to watch out for?

real exposure to lock-free data structures versus surface-level familiarity from the resume bullet

What's new in C++20 or C++23 that you've actually used, and what problem did it solve for you?

whether modern C++ experience is genuine hands-on use versus just knowing the version number exists

If I gave you a program that's segfaulting intermittently under load, how would you go about tracking down the cause?

practical debugging instincts and familiarity with tools like GDB, Valgrind, or address sanitizer

How would you design a simple protocol for two services to exchange messages quickly and reliably? What would you worry about getting wrong?

grasp of networking and protocol encoding/decoding fundamentals, not just API-level networking

Walk me through how you'd design a data structure to be shared safely across multiple threads without using locks.

depth of concurrency knowledge beyond definitions, applied to an actual design problem

Situational

Imagine you're asked to add a feature to a system you didn't build, and the person who wrote it is no longer around. How do you approach understanding it before you touch anything?

caution and process when working inside unfamiliar, high-stakes legacy code

A trader comes to you and says a system is behaving strangely during a busy market moment, but they can't tell you exactly what's wrong technically. How do you handle that conversation?

ability to translate vague, non-technical input from stakeholders into an actionable technical investigation

If a production system needs to keep running while you deploy a fix, how do you think about testing that fix is safe before it goes live?

understanding of risk and reliability practices appropriate to a low-latency trading environment

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The full job description

As published by Akuna Capital.

<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW256449397 BCX0"> 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 on a variety of exchanges across various asset classes, primarily as an options market maker. To do this successfully, we build and maintain our own low-latency technologies, including application frameworks, trading strategies, and mathematical models.  Our Founding Partners first conceptualized Akuna in their hometown of Sydney, Australia. 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 around the world: Sydney, Shanghai, Singapore, and London.  What You’ll Do as an Entry-Level C++ Software Engineer at Akuna  C++ software engineers at Akuna have the opportunity to work on a variety of high-performance systems that power the firm’s core business operations. Our engineers work on small-to-medium-sized teams that frequently interface with Quant and Trading, allowing them to build expertise in a specific domain area while maintaining broader exposure to the needs of their end-users. Akuna’s C++ systems are heavily multithreaded, asynchronous, and distributed by nature, which comes with a slew of challenges; our engineers are tasked with ensuring these systems are reliable, efficient, scalable, and flexible enough for even the most niche use cases. Entry-level engineers in particular are responsible for day-to-day upkeep of core systems, servicing lower-risk feature requests, and executing individual projects on behalf of their team’s stakeholders.  Akuna is looking for software engineers who are motivated, can solve complex problems, and are willing to reach for creative solutions when faced with novel problems. We value innovation, hard work, and knowledge, and we want our engineers to make a direct impact on the firm. Whether you are interested in algorithms and data structures, concurrency, networking and protocols, performance tuning, data capture and analysis, mathematical modeling, hardware, or something else, there’s engaging work to be done.  Requirements for This Role  <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="3" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s, or Ph.D. in a technical field (computer science/engineering, math, physics, or equivalent) </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="3" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1">Graduating by August 2027 </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="3" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="3" data-aria-level="1">Legal authorization to work in the U.S. as of the first day of employment, including F-1 students using OPT or STEM </li> </ul> Previous experience in finance or trading is not required. Many of our engineers joined Akuna with little-to-no prior knowledge of the markets, and we pride ourselves on our ability to onboard those new to the industry. Training and continuous education are provided for all engineers to ensure they can build the requisite technical and non-technical skillset for success.  Qualities That Make a Great C++ Software Engineer Candidate  <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Experience programming in modern C++ (C++20 or later; C++23 preferred) </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1">Experience with several of the following </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Courier New" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Courier New","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="2">Distributed systems </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Courier New" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Courier New","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="2">Parallel processing </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Courier New" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Courier New","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="3" data-aria-level="2">Asynchronous architectures </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Courier New" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Courier New","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="4" data-aria-level="2">Networking or protocol encoding/decoding </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Courier New" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Courier New","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="5" data-aria-level="2">Lock-free data structures and algorithms </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Courier New" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Courier New","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="6" data-aria-level="2">Performance profiling (e.g. perf, gprof, vtune) </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Courier New" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Courier New","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="7" data-aria-level="2">Scripting, such as in Python or shell </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="3" data-aria-level="1">Familiarity with standard debugging tools (e.g. GDB, Valgrind, address sanitizer) </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="4" data-aria-level="1">The ability to effectively communicate with non-technical stakeholders in Quant and Trading to obtain requirements, workshop solutions, and implement agreed-upon roadmaps </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="5" data-aria-level="1">The ability to react quickly and effectively to rapidly changing market conditions, including the ability to quickly and accurately respond and/or solve math and coding problems, is an essential function of the role </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="6" data-aria-level="1">A passion for building complex systems from the ground up </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="7" data-aria-level="1">The ability to collaborate with other developers of different backgrounds, specialties, and knowledge levels to collectively deliver cohesive solutions to non-trivial problems </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="8" data-aria-level="1">An intrinsically motivated attitude and the ability to work independently </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="9" data-aria-level="1">A strong sense of ownership, including a drive to fix bugs when they inevitably arise </li> </ul> In addition to the above technical skills, Akuna values diversity of experience and perspective. We believe that engineers with varied backgrounds and interests allow us to approach problems from unique angles and to uncover innovative, optimal solutions. We want everyone to feel empowered to apply; we welcome your application, and we strongly encourage you to take the first steps in joining us in the future!  Resumes must be submitted in PDF format.  By applying 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.   We are an AI-friendly company and encourage employees to leverage AI in their daily work. However, AI assistance is not permitted during interviews or assessments. Our interview process is designed to evaluate your individual skills and judgment, and the use of AI tools will result in disqualification from the hiring process. In accordance with the 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.  </div>

Apply at Akuna Capital

Software Engineer (Entry-Level) - C++

Likely interview questions for this role

Practice this interview out loud.

The full job description

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