Jobs › Akuna Capital

Software Engineer - Python, Business Operations

Akuna Capital · Chicago, IL · Python

Posted Aug 11, 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 were the sole or lead developer on a project that touched a business function outside of engineering, like finance or HR. How did you figure out what they actually needed versus what they asked for?

whether they can translate ambiguous business requirements into a working system without heavy technical oversight

Tell me about a time a non-technical stakeholder pushed back on a technical tradeoff you made. How did you explain it so they actually understood the decision?

communication skill with business users who don't share technical vocabulary

Tell me about a project where the requirements kept expanding as you went, like a schema that needed to get more granular as the business changed its mind. How did you keep the system from turning into a mess?

ability to design for evolving requirements rather than hardcoding a one-time solution

Technical

Walk me through how you'd design a bitemporal schema in PostgreSQL for tracking cost allocation over time. What does bitemporal actually buy you here that a normal timestamped table doesn't?

whether the candidate actually understands bitemporal modeling versus just knowing the buzzword

Say you're pulling cost data from Jira, NetSuite, Device42, and Bitbucket and none of them agree on how they identify the same cost center or project. How would you design the reconciliation logic?

practical experience stitching together systems that were never meant to talk to each other

You've integrated with NetSuite before. What's actually painful about working with SuiteScript or SuiteTalk, and how did you work around it?

real hands-on experience versus resume-listed familiarity

Describe a REST API integration you built where authentication or error handling turned out to be trickier than expected. What went wrong and how did you catch it?

depth of experience with production-grade API integration, not toy examples

Have you built something using an LLM API like Anthropic's or OpenAI's where the output needed to be structured and reliable, not just a chat response? How did you handle cases where the model gave you garbage back?

whether their AI experience goes beyond prompting a chatbot into building dependable pipelines

Since this data touches cost attribution and things like NetSuite and vendor data, how do you think about security or data handling when you're piping company financial data through a third-party AI API?

awareness of data sensitivity and compliance concerns specific to a financial services environment

Situational

If you were asked to use MCP or a similar protocol to connect an LLM to an internal system, how would you think about what data or actions you'd expose to the model, and what you'd keep it away from?

judgment about security boundaries when giving AI systems access to internal tools

A manual process in Finance or HR is eating up someone's whole week every month. How would you go about deciding whether AI, automation, or just a better script is the right fix?

whether they reach for AI as a reflex or actually evaluate the right tool for the job

The Director of Operations hands you three competing requests from Procurement, Finance, and HR at once, all urgent. How do you decide what to work on first?

ability to prioritize independently across multiple stakeholders without a technical manager mediating

You're handed schema documentation and handoff materials from a project you didn't build, and now you own maintaining it in production. What do you look for first to make sure you're not walking into a mess?

how they approach inheriting and maintaining someone else's system responsibly

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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 Software Engineer - Business Operations at Akuna:  This role is the primary ongoing development resource for Business Operations technology, primarily supporting Procurement, Finance, and Human Resources. The current priority is a data infrastructure project that consolidates cost data from several internal systems into a unified cost-attribution framework, but the role is not scoped to that project alone - it will take on a broadening range of development work across these functions over time. A defining requirement of this role is applying AI capabilities - through native AI features in existing tools, API integrations, and protocols such as MCP (Model Context Protocol) - to improve data workflows, reporting, and operational processes across these functions. In this role, you will:   <ul> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Lead the development efforts for our FP&A Cost Attribution Project <ul> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Serve as lead developer for the development of a bitemporal PostgreSQL database that enables traceable cost allocation, with a schema designed to become more granular as business requirements evolve</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Build and maintain integrations pulling data from Jira, NetSuite, Device42, and Bitbucket, among other data sources, to support cost attribution logic</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Support the project toward its Q1 2027 deployment target, including schema documentation and handoff materials, and maintain the system once in production</li> </ul> </li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Lead engineering efforts in support of our Business Operations teams</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Work with the Procurement team to rebuild the current quote order management systems</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Support Finance and HR operations by building data pipelines, automating reports, and integrating systems as needs arise</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Act as a general-purpose development resource across these functions, prioritizing work in coordination with the Director of Operations</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Identify and implement native AI features within tools already in use by Procurement, Finance, HR, Compliance, and Risk, such as AI capabilities embedded in NetSuite, Jira, Confluence, or other platforms</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Build custom integrations using APIs, MCP, or comparable protocols to connect large language models to internal systems and workflows</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Evaluate current manual processes across these functions and propose and implement AI-assisted or automated alternatives</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Work with the Security team to maintain security best practices and appropriate data-handling controls when integrating AI tooling with internal or vendor systems</li> </ul> Qualities that make great candidates:  <ul> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Professional software development experience (minimum 3-5 years), with demonstrated ability to work as a sole or lead developer on cross-functional projects</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Strong proficiency in a backend language commonly used for data integration and automation work, such as Python</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Strong SQL skills and relational database design experience; direct experience with PostgreSQL is preferred</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Demonstrated experience building and consuming REST APIs, including authentication, error handling, and data transformation across systems that were not designed to work together</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Direct experience integrating with at least several of the following, or clearly transferable equivalents: Jira/JSM (API/scripting), NetSuite (SuiteScript/SuiteTalk or equivalent), Atlassian Bitbucket/Git, and CMDB-type tools such as Device42</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Hands-on experience integrating LLM/AI APIs, such as Anthropic or OpenAI, into applications or workflows, including prompt construction and handling structured and unstructured outputs</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Version control proficiency with Git and comfort working in a Bitbucket-based environment</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Ability to communicate technical concepts and tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders in Finance, Procurement, and HR</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Ability to work independently, manage competing priorities across multiple business functions, and operate with minimal direct technical oversight</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Prior experience in financial services, trading, or a similarly data- and compliance-sensitive industry</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Experience with cost allocation, chargeback, or FinOps-style frameworks</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Experience building internal tools or dashboards for non-technical business users</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">Exposure to procurement or vendor management systems</li> <li data-leveltext="•" data-font="Calibri" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Calibri","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"•","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1">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</li> </ul> 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! 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

Software Engineer - Python, Business Operations

Likely interview questions for this role

Practice this interview out loud.

The full job description

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