Quantitative Research Intern, Summer 2027

Akuna Capital is recruiting for Quantitative Research Intern, Summer 2027 in Chicago, IL. This listing was last seen on the firm's own job board on August 22, 2026.

Options market making with the most approachable graduate process among the Chicago firms.

What sets Akuna Capital apart: Lower resume bar than peer firms, with more weight on the assessment. Options and volatility questions from the first round. Junior trader training programme that assumes no prior finance.

Related preparation: Quantitative Researcher (QR) Career Roadmap, Machine Learning Quant Career Roadmap, Quant Strategist (Desk Quant) Career Roadmap, Quant Data Scientist (Alternative Data) Roadmap, Quant Research Ops (MLOps) Roadmap and Financial Data Scientist Career Roadmap.

The role, as Akuna Capital describes it, published on July 13, 2026 and reproduced from their job board:

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, London, and Singapore.

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

Akuna’s Quant team is looking to add Quant Research Interns to a team of mathematicians, statisticians and technologists for our 10-week Akunacademy internship program 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 trading strategies using statistical and machine learning algorithms.

Design and implement optimization algorithms for portfolio construction.

Develop quantitative models describing market behavior.

Advance existing initiatives and explore opportunities for new research topics.

Qualities that make great candidates: