Software Engineer Intern - C++, Summer 2027

Akuna Capital•Chicago, IL

1d•$145,000

About The Position

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 on a variety of exchanges across various asset classes, primarily as an options market maker. To do this successfully, we build and maintain our own low-latency technologies, including application frameworks, trading strategies, and mathematical models. Our Founding Partners first conceptualized Akuna in their hometown of Sydney, Australia. 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 around the world: Sydney, Shanghai, Singapore, and London. C++ software engineer interns at Akuna have the opportunity to work on a variety of high-performance systems that power the firm’s core business operations. Our interns are embedded on small-to-medium-sized teams that frequently interface with Quant and Trading, allowing them to focus on a specific domain area while still experiencing the day-to-day life of an Akuna software engineer. Akuna’s C++ systems are heavily multithreaded, asynchronous, and distributed by nature, which comes with a slew of challenges; our engineers are tasked with ensuring these systems are reliable, efficient, scalable, and flexible enough for even the most niche use cases. Over their 10-week Akunacademy experience, software engineer interns will work on one or more valuable projects, progressing from ideation and design all the way to delivery and maintenance. These projects range from adding functionality onto existing systems to implementing brand new componentry to experimenting with new technologies and patterns to better understand the solution space. Akuna is looking for software engineer interns who are motivated, can solve complex problems, and are willing to reach for creative solutions when faced with novel problems. We value innovation, hard work, and knowledge, and we want our engineer interns to make a direct impact on the firm. Whether you are interested in algorithms and data structures, concurrency, networking and protocols, performance tuning, data capture and analysis, mathematical modeling, hardware, or something else, there’s engaging work to be done.

Requirements

Pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s, or Ph.D. in a technical field (computer science/engineering, math, physics, or equivalent)
Graduating by August 2028
Legal authorization to work in the U.S. as of the first day of employment, including F-1 students using OPT or STEM
Experience programming in modern C++ (C++20 or later; C++23 preferred)
Experience with several of the following: Distributed systems, Parallel processing, Asynchronous architectures, Networking or protocol encoding/decoding, Lock-free data structures and algorithms, Performance profiling (e.g. perf, gprof, vtune), Scripting, such as in Python or shell
Familiarity with standard debugging tools (e.g. GDB, Valgrind, address sanitizer)
The ability to effectively communicate with non-technical stakeholders in Quant and Trading to obtain requirements, workshop solutions, and implement agreed-upon roadmaps
The ability to react quickly and effectively to rapidly changing market conditions, including the ability to quickly and accurately respond and/or solve math and coding problems, is an essential function of the role
A passion for building complex systems from the ground up
An intrinsically motivated attitude and the ability to work independently
A strong sense of ownership, including a drive to fix bugs when they inevitably arise

Nice To Haves

Previous experience in finance or trading is not required.
AI-friendly company and encourage employees to leverage AI in their daily work.

Responsibilities

Work on a variety of high-performance systems that power the firm’s core business operations.
Focus on a specific domain area while still experiencing the day-to-day life of an Akuna software engineer.
Ensure systems are reliable, efficient, scalable, and flexible.
Work on one or more valuable projects, progressing from ideation and design all the way to delivery and maintenance.
Add functionality onto existing systems.
Implement brand new componentry.
Experiment with new technologies and patterns.
Solve complex problems and reach for creative solutions.
Make a direct impact on the firm.
Collaborate with other developers of different backgrounds, specialties, and knowledge levels to collectively deliver cohesive solutions to non-trivial problems.