Junior Trader (Training in Chicago) (Jun 2025)

Highlight:

You will start in the Akuna Capital Sydney office as a Junior Trader in the derivatives trading domain. 
This is a unique opportunity, as the trader training program for this role will take place in Akuna's Chicago headquarters. 
Once your training is complete, you will return to Akuna’s Sydney office to trade full-time on one of our trading desks.

This could provide you with

• a systematic educational program to help you develop quickly, and
• a global vision and work experience to extend your knowledge on international markets across a diverse set of asset classes, and
• a welcoming and supportive culture with a strong emphasis on collaboration and employee growth.

Timeline:

• Application Deadline: April 10, Thu, 2025, Sydney Local Time
• Interview Round 1 (Option 201 course, please refer to below section for further details): April 15, Tue – April 17, Thu, 2025
• Final Round Interview: April 22, Tue – May 2, Fri, 2025
• Start Date: your start date is expected in July-August 2025 based on visa condition
• Chicago Training: starting August 25, 2025

What you'll do as a Junior Trader at Akuna Sydney office:

Our traders are bright, well-rounded thinkers, competitive, and ambitious! Joining us as a Junior Trader means you don't need to have any finance or trading experience. We are looking for individuals with potential, a desire to compete and drive to create immediate impact in our growing firm.

Akuna Capital is an innovative trading firm with a strong focus on collaboration, cutting-edge technology, data driven solutions, and automation. Our Juniors are trusted with more responsibility and opportunity to advance quickly in your career. We have brilliant young people leading some of our largest desks and have a number of desks in development.

We’re committed to providing collaborative & valuable mentorship from our experienced Traders that will help you to learn quickly, find value from our Trader Training Program(introduction as below) and make an immediate impact on the business.

What you can expect after applying:

• Apply for this role with your most updated resume by April 10, 2025
• After passing the resume screen, you will be invited to join our Option 201 course (introduction as below) as the first-round interview which will take place 1.5 hours per day for 3 consecutive days from April 15 to April 17, 2025 from 12:00pm Sydney Local Time.
• Top performers will be expedited to final round interviews during April 22 to May 2, 2025
• You can expect to hear from your recruiter on initial application updates in ~3 business days.

Akuna Capital’s Options 201 Course:

During our 3-day virtual Options 201 Course, running from Apr 15 to Apr 17, 2025, we will build upon what is introduced in our online Akuna’s Options 101 Course. We will deep dive into how market makers 1) price options 2) analyze risk 3) automate their workflow and more. Please note that prior completion of the Options 101 Course is not required, but highly recommended. 

Over the 3-day virtual course, participants will work through five lectures with our trading team, and complete five corresponding quizzes. By the end of the course, we expect all participants to better understand options market making, and most importantly, have a better idea of whether trading is the right career for them. Top performers will be expedited to final round interviews for our Junior Trader role. As mentioned, this role includes trader training in Akuna’s Chicago headquarters, providing a unique opportunity for successful candidates.

Trader Training Program at Akuna Chicago office:

Your learning is important to us! You will begin our Akuna Training Program with lectures, projects, written assessments, mock trading games and job shadowing at our Chicago office which takes around 3 months. We will teach you all about:

• Market Making
• Options Greeks
• Risk Management
• Proprietary systems.

Guided by our experienced traders, mock market games will teach you how to value futures and options, hedge your risk, and get comfortable with option combinations, all while staking real money as you compete against your peers.

Junior traders will develop their technical skills (coding is not a requirement!) via statistics-based projects aimed at solving real problems being faced by our trading teams. These might involve conducting analysis and constructing models using python and Excel or building interactive trading tools for use on our desks.

We place traders with teams so that they can get experience and build and broaden their skills and eventually select where we believe they can have the biggest impact and career growth. Our team values strong mental maths, great communication, and a passion for creative problem solving. If you’re ready to challenge yourself at an exciting firm with opportunity to grow and develop, Akuna is the place for you!

Requirements for this role:

• Able to dedicate 2 hours each day throughout Apr 15-Apr 17, 2025 to attend Options 201 course including virtual lectures, mini-shadows, office hours, and complete quizzes.
• Able to meet the timelines per illustrated “Timeline” section above
• Graduated before July 2025 with 0-2 years’ experience
• Bachelor, Masters or PhDs in Engineering, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Mechanics, Computer Science, Actuarial Science, Economics, FinTech, Data Science, Business Analytics, Financial Engineering, Big Data or related degrees
• Quick mental maths, pattern recognition, and probability skills
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Desire to learn about financial markets and economic theories
• Risk appetite & ability to work well under pressure in a face paced, team environment

Qualities that make great candidates:

• Distinction Average or proven strong academics
• Awards, prizes, medals, competitions, and scholarships
• Achievements outside of studies through your hobbies and interests
• Work experience that enhanced your communication, problem solving, analytical, and teamwork skills

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, Singapore, Shanghai, Boston and London. 

At Akuna, we believe that the people are the centre of everything we do. Our Sydney office has a start-up feel with less than 100 people, which means you really get to know the team! We run social poker competitions, happy hours, have a fully stacked breakfast and snack room, host social events, social club events, and offer great training with our Akuna University. We are looking for the best talent to join us on this journey. If you enjoy being part of smart, driven teams with real challenges to solve- this could be the place for you!