Akuna Capital

Akuna Capital is a proprietary trading firm specialising in options market making. Its founding partners, including Andrew Killion, first came up with the idea in their hometown of Sydney, and in 2011 they opened the firm’s first office in Chicago, the centre of the listed options industry. The name comes from an Australian Aboriginal word meaning “flowing water”, a reference to the liquidity a market maker provides. Chicago is still the headquarters, and Akuna also has offices in Sydney, Shanghai, London and Singapore. Shanghai, opened in 2014, was its first office outside the US. The firm is led by CEO Ryan Duckworth.

In the US, Akuna trades through its broker-dealer Akuna Securities LLC, which is registered with the SEC and is a member of the major US options and equity exchanges, from Cboe and Nasdaq to NYSE, MIAX and IEX. The broker-dealer has no customers and trades only for its own account. Akuna quotes options on equity indices, single stocks, interest rates and commodities, and has traded crypto spot, futures and options since 2017.

Akuna designs and builds its own trading systems, pricing models and infrastructure. The trading stack is modern C++ on Linux alongside Python, with C# .NET for traders’ desktop applications, React and TypeScript for web tools, a data platform built on Kafka, Spark and ClickHouse, and a hybrid cloud that runs mainly on AWS and Kubernetes. Traders, quant researchers, quant developers and engineers work side by side, and the firm describes its culture as built on collaboration and individual ownership.

What Akuna Trades

• Options market making
  The core of the business: continuous two-sided quotes in listed options across US exchanges, including SPX options on the Cboe trading floor and SOFR options on CME.
• Delta One and volatility arbitrage
  Desks that trade the linear products behind the options books and look for relative mispricing in volatility.
• Relative value
  One of Akuna’s newest businesses and its dedicated position-taking desk, trading volatility in index and single-name options.
• Crypto
  Spot, futures and options on digital assets, a market Akuna has been active in since 2017.
• Prediction markets
  A newer team that prices event contracts, including sports.

Culture and Benefits

Akuna puts a lot of weight on teaching. It runs its own in-house training programme, Akuna U, and staff outside trading can take Trading 101, an eight-week lecture series on how the trading business works. Benefits the firm lists include gyms in the Chicago and Sydney offices, tuition reimbursement and an ownership opportunity for top performers. Illinois job ads list a base salary starting at 145,000 US dollars for Junior Trader, Quant Researcher and Software Engineer roles. Akuna calls itself an AI-friendly company, but AI assistance is not allowed during interviews or assessments.

Hiring at Akuna

Akuna hires into four areas: trading, quant (researchers, developers and strategists), technology and operations. Most openings are in Chicago, with smaller teams hiring in Sydney, Shanghai and Singapore.

Graduates can start directly as a Junior Trader, a role that needs no prior industry experience. New traders go through training first and are then placed on a desk such as options market making, Delta One, volatility arbitrage, crypto or the Quantitative Strategy Group. Students in their penultimate year can apply for Akunacademy, the firm’s 10-week internship in tech and quant. For 2027, Akuna replaced its summer trading internship with several one-week Trading Sneak Peek Weeks in Chicago, taught by dedicated trader trainers.

Akuna also runs programmes that can shortcut the process. Options 101 is a free online course on options basics. Top performers in Options 201, a week-long virtual seminar with daily lectures and quizzes, are fast-tracked to Junior Trader interviews, and the Virtual Quant Trading Challenge, where participants build Python market-making bots for a simulated exchange, offers its best performers expedited recruitment. Choose your application carefully: applying to one trading role means you will not be considered for other full-time trading roles that recruiting season, and the same rule applies to quant and tech roles.

Based on candidate reports, the process for trading roles runs roughly as follows:

• Online assessments
  A timed mental math test and a number sequences test, followed by a coding test for candidates who pass both.
• Video interview
  A recorded video assessment that includes a betting game.
• Technical interview
  A call with a trader covering probability, brainteasers, market making and options.
• Recruiter interview
  Motivation, teamwork and why you want to trade at Akuna.
• Final round
  A session of several hours that revisits the earlier topics in more depth.

Speed matters from the first step: the mental math and sequences tests are short and strictly timed. Our Akuna Capital interview process guide covers every stage and the test formats in detail.