Quantitative Trading Internship, Summer 2018

About Akuna:
Akuna Capital is a young and booming trading firm with a strong focus on cutting-edge technology, data driven decisions and automation. Our core competency is providing liquidity as an options market-maker – meaning we provide 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, Andrew Killion and Mitchell Skinner, 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, and Cambridge (USA).

What you’ll do as a Quantitative Trading Intern at Akuna:
We are seeking Quantitative Trading Interns to join our dynamic team at Akuna Capital for our 10 week internship Akunacademy in our Chicago office. The ideal candidate will be a motivated individual with a desire to make an immediate impact at a growing firm. Quantitative Trading Interns will work with our strong team of Quant Developers and Quant Traders on part of our automated options trading desk. The successful candidate will bring enthusiasm for problem solving, financial mathematics, and will bring strong initiatives in generating trading ideas in developing and testing strategies. In this role you will:

• Write and optimize data analysis code and calculation intensive models
• Develop quantitate models, back-test and implement trading strategies in Python (C++ is a plus)
• A strong interest in finance and learning to develop trading strategies is a plus
• Provide Python mentoring to team members and traders
• Strong math aptitude, numerical and quantitative analysis skills
• Entrepreneurial self-starter ready to work in a fast paced, competitive, team environment
• Passionate about problem-solving and finding creative solutions in an ever changing market

Qualities that make great candidates:

• Pursuing a Bachelors, Masters, or Ph.D. in technical field – Engineering, Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Actuarial Science or a related/equivalent field
• Python programming experience required
• Entrepreneurial self-starter ready to work in a fast paced, competitive, team environment
• Understanding of option theory
• Demonstrated experience with research or data analysis projects, either a personal or school project
• Passionate about problem-solving and finding creative solutions in an ever changing market
• Graduation date of August 2019 or prior
• Major GPA of 3.0 or above