Junior Pit Trader

Job Description

About Akuna:

Akuna Capital is a young and booming 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, Boston and Austin.

What you’ll do as a Junior Trader at Akuna:

We are seeking bright, math-savvy, competitive, and ambitious Junior Pit Traders with a strong desire to learn how to make markets for an industry-leading trading firm. Akuna gives new Traders the opportunity to learn from the most successful members of our Trading team and apply their knowledge quickly. The ideal candidate will be a motivated individual with a desire to compete in the marketplace and make an immediate impact at a growing firm.

As a Junior Pit Trader, you will help represent Akuna in this externally facing role by competitively marking markets in Cboe’s bustling trading pits. The role requires the ability to build and maintain relationships with market participants to maximize revenue generation and information gathering. A strong Pit Trader will have an immediate impact on desk profitability by independently analyzing and vociferously acting upon trading opportunities, researching counterparty trends and positional exposure, analyzing counterparty trade quality, updating Akuna’s pricing and parameters to reflect relevant trading flow, and making recommendations to the team surrounding Akuna’s positional management in a physically demanding work environment where being heard is as important as being correct.

*Please note both positions are for candidates looking for a start date in January 2023 or August 2023 (i.e. those with graduation dates of Dec 2022 or May 2023). This is not for immediate hire.

Qualities that make great candidates:

• BS degree in Engineering, Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Actuarial Science or a related/equivalent field preferred and must be completed upon employment
• Available to start in January or August 2023
• Strong critical thinking, problem-solving, and quantitative analysis skills
• The ability to communicate effectively and efficiently while fostering external professional relationships
• Entrepreneurial self-starter ready to work in a fast paced and competitive team environment
• Desire to learn about financial markets and economic theories
• Collegiate team sports experience preferred
• Major GPA of 3.0 or above
• Legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required on the first day of employment including F-1 students using OPT or STEM