Software Engineer - Python

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. Akuna Sydney opened in early 2018 and is at the center of Akuna’s Asian trading operations. Akuna’s focus in Asia is trading Indian, Korean, crypto and US night markets. 

At Akuna, we believe that the people are the centre of everything we do. Our Sydney office has a start-up feel with less than 100 people, which means you really get to know the team! We run social poker competitions, happy hours, have a fully stacked breakfast and snack room, host social events, social club events, and offer great training with our Akuna University. We are expanding rapidly and looking for the best talent to join us on this journey. If you enjoy being part of smart, driven teams with real challenges to solve- this could be the place for you!

What you’ll do as a Software Engineer on the Post Trade Tech team at Akuna:

The Post Trade Tech team is responsible for Akuna's Risk, Compliance and Middle Office systems. Our applications are crucial for helping the trading desks manage their exposure to various risks, facilitating trade bookings, position management and monitoring trading activity to ensure compliance. We also develop and maintain the systems our finance team uses to prepare our financial reports and ledgers. With a diverse set of stakeholders across the company, engineers in our team have a lot of exposure to different parts of the business, which means plenty of opportunity to make a tangible impact.

The ideal candidate has a strong background in Python application development, knows their way around a database and is comfortable working across all stages of the software development lifecycle, from requirements gathering to production support. We are a collaborative group, and we're looking for a team player, someone who isn't afraid to be curious and is keen to share their ideas. With a broad suite of applications to manage, we also hold our engineers to a high technical standard in all the work they do, whether that be design, implementation, delivery or otherwise.

Responsibilities include:

• Collaborate with traders, developers, and other cross-functional teams to understand the requirements for shared systems.
• Develop across the tech stack, from microservice back-ends to APIs to web UIs, slack bots and more.
• Ensure the scalability, reliability, and performance of post trade systems to meet the demands of high-frequency trading.
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues promptly to minimize impact on trading activities.
• Contribute innovative ideas and solutions to the team.

Qualities that make great candidates:

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent technical field.
• 2 - 5 years’ experience writing Python applications.
• Solid SQL skills, comfortable with complex queries.
• Demonstrated delivery of software solutions which provide measurable business benefits.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration tools (e.g., Docker and Kubernetes).
• Familiarity with web development technologies such as React.
• Understanding of financial markets and trading concepts is a plus, but not required.