Junior Quantitative Researcher - Machine Learning

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, Andrew Killion and Mitchell Skinner, first conceptualised 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 Boston.

Akuna Sydney opened in early 2018 and is at the centre of Akuna’s Asian trading operations. Akuna’s focus in Asia is currently trading HK, cryptocurrencies and US night markets and is looking to expand to trading on all major Asian exchanges. Employees will work together towards achieving Akuna’s goals across all areas of the business, including trading and desk buildout, cutting-edge research and data analysis, strategy creation, and building ultra-low-latency trading systems that are tailored to local market conditions.

What you’ll do as a Junior Quantitative Researcher at Akuna:

Akuna’s Quantitative Trading and Research team is looking to add Junior Quant Researchers to a team of mathematicians, statisticians and technologists. 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 trading strategies using statistical and machine learning algorithms
• Design, conduct, and analyse experiments for a deep understanding of derivatives and financial markets
• Design and implement optimization algorithms for portfolio construction
• Advance existing initiatives and explore opportunities for new research topics

Full-time compensation packages starting at $100K AUD.

Qualities that make great candidates:

• Bachelors, Masters or PhD in Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics (or a related subject) must be completed upon employment
• Proven research background in academic or professional environment
• Basic programming skills in Python (C++ is a plus)
• Expertise in statistics and machine learning
• Financial experience is not a requirement

Must currently be authorised to work in Australia.  Akuna does not offer sponsorship for this position.