Quantitative Research Intern, Summer 2024

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 and London.

What you'll do as a Quantitative Research Intern at Akuna:

Akuna's Quantitative Trading and Research team is looking to add Quantitative Research Interns to a team of mathematicians, statisticians and technologists for our 10 week internship Akunacademy in our Chicago office. This team creates trading strategies scientifically by combining its quantitative expertise with sophisticated understanding of derivatives and financial markets.

We are looking for talented researchers who can apply and develop machine learning algorithms to contribute to Akuna's strategy portfolio. In this role you will:

• Develop quantitative models describing market behavior
• Advance existing initiatives and explore opportunities for new research topics
• Develop trading strategies using statistical and machine learning algorithms
• Design and implement optimization algorithms for portfolio construction

Qualities that make great candidates:

• Legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required on the first day of employment including F-1 students using CPT, OPT or STEM
• Financial experience is not a requirement
• Experience building mathematical models for complex real-world problems
• Expertise in statistics and machine learning
• Must graduate by August 2025
• Intermediate programming skills in Python or C++
• Pursuing a Bachelor's, Masters or PhD in Statistics, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics (or a related subject)

Please note: If you apply to multiple roles, you may be asked to complete multiple coding challenges and interviews.

• Resumes must be submitted in PDF format.