Jobs › Akuna Capital

Software Engineer Intern - C++, Summer 2027

Akuna Capital · Chicago, IL · Engineering

Posted Jul 14, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Sep 20, 2026

Apply at Akuna Capital

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 built something in C++ that had to deal with multiple threads running at once. What went wrong, and how did you find it?

whether the candidate has hands-on exposure to concurrency bugs rather than just textbook knowledge

Tell me about a project where you had to talk to someone who wasn't technical to figure out what they actually needed built.

ability to translate requirements from non-engineers, which mirrors working with Quant and Trading

Describe a time you had to learn a new tool or technology quickly to finish a project.

speed of ramp-up, since interns are expected to go from ideation to delivery in ten weeks

Tell me about a time you got fast, unexpected feedback that meant you had to change your approach midstream.

adaptability under pressure, tied to the role's emphasis on reacting quickly to changing conditions

What draws you to a trading firm instead of a more typical tech company, given you don't need finance background for this role?

genuine motivation and fit for a fast-paced, low-latency, high-stakes environment

Technical

Walk me through what happens in memory when you have a shared resource being read and written by two threads without any locking.

basic understanding of race conditions and why synchronization matters

Say you have a queue that a producer thread writes to and a consumer thread reads from, and you're told to make it as fast as possible with no locks. How would you approach that?

exposure to lock-free data structures and whether the candidate can reason about tradeoffs, not just recite the term

How would you go about finding out why a piece of C++ code that used to run fine is suddenly using ten times as much CPU?

familiarity with profiling tools like perf or vtune and a systematic debugging mindset

You get a segfault that only shows up once every few thousand runs. What's your process for tracking it down?

comfort with tools like GDB, Valgrind, or address sanitizer and patience with intermittent bugs

What's the difference between a mutex, an atomic, and a lock-free approach, and when would you reach for each one?

depth of understanding of concurrency primitives beyond buzzwords

What newer C++ features, from C++20 or C++23, have you actually used, and what problem did they solve for you?

real hands-on modern C++ experience versus only knowing older C++ from school

Here's a coding problem: given a stream of numbers coming in continuously, keep track of the median at any point in time. How would you solve it, and how would you make it fast?

raw algorithmic problem-solving and ability to reason about time complexity under a live setting

Situational

Imagine a trader tells you a system is 'too slow' but can't say exactly what's slow. How would you work with them to pin down the actual problem?

whether the candidate can extract concrete requirements from vague, high-pressure stakeholder feedback

If you were designing a small piece of a distributed system where one component needs to know the state of another over the network, what could go wrong, and how would you plan for it?

awareness of distributed systems failure modes like latency, partial failure, and stale state

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.

<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 a C++ Software Engineer Intern at Akuna:   C++ software engineer interns at Akuna have the opportunity to work on a variety of high-performance systems that power the firm’s core business operations. Our interns are embedded on small-to-medium-sized teams that frequently interface with Quant and Trading, allowing them to focus on a specific domain area while still experiencing the day-to-day life of an Akuna software engineer. 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.  Over their 10-week Akunacademy experience, software engineer interns will work on one or more valuable projects, progressing from ideation and design all the way to delivery and maintenance. These projects range from adding functionality onto existing systems to implementing brand new componentry to experimenting with new technologies and patterns to better understand the solution space. Akuna is looking for software engineer interns 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 engineer interns 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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1">Graduating by August 2028 </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="3" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":1,"335559684":-2,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="2">Distributed systems </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <ul> <li> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":1,"335559684":-2,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="2">Parallel processing </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <ul> <li> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":1,"335559684":-2,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="3" data-aria-level="2">Asynchronous architectures </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <ul> <li> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":1,"335559684":-2,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="4" data-aria-level="2">Networking or protocol encoding/decoding </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <ul> <li> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":1,"335559684":-2,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[9675],"469777803":"left","469777804":"o","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="5" data-aria-level="2">Lock-free data structures and algorithms </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <ul> <li> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":1,"335559684":-2,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","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> </li> </ul> <ul> <li> <ul> <li data-leveltext="o" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":1,"335559684":-2,"335559685":1440,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","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> </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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,"335559683":0,"335559684":-2,"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 Intern - C++, Summer 2027

Likely interview questions for this role

Practice this interview out loud.

The full job description

Related jobs

Junior Quantitative Researcher

Accounting Intern (Term-Time, Part-Time)

Junior Trader

Fundamental Equity Analyst

Experienced Options Trader - SOFR

Expression of Interest: 2027 Trading Sneak Peek Weeks