Trader - Graduate Program (Aug 2024)

Want to turn your passion for trading into a career? 

Akuna is one of the youngest and fastest growing firms, with trading teams in traditional finance as well as emerging crypto and defi markets. Our traders are bright, well-rounded thinkers, competitive, and ambitious! Joining us as a Graduate Trader, we don’t need you to have any finance or trading experience. We are looking for individuals with potential, a desire to compete and drive to create immediate impact in our growing firm.

Our Juniors are trusted with more responsibility and opportunity to advance quickly in your career. We have brilliant young people leading some of our largest desks and have a number of desks in development. We’re committed to providing collaborative & valuable mentorship from our experienced Traders that will help you to learn quickly, find value from our Akunacademy program. Our team values strong mental maths, great communication, a passion for problem solving and finding creative solutions. If you’re ready to challenge yourself at an exciting firm with opportunity to grow and develop, Akuna is the place for you!

Start dates: August 2024 & February 2025

What you’ll do:

• Learn the basics first from our Trader Training Program during your initial six-weeks, guided through our classroom style lectures, written assessments, mock trading games and job shadowing.  
• Develop the essential skills to build a strong foundation in the following areas: market making, options greeks, risk management, proprietary systems and much more.
• Learn how to value futures & options, hedge your risk, and get comfortable with option combinations through mock trading games guided by our experienced traders. 
• Develop your technical skills by immersing yourself in a statistics-based project where you will be solving real problems being faced by our trading teams.
• Experience what it’s like to be a Trader at Akuna through desks rotations, where we then select where we believe you can have the biggest impact and career growth.
• Build relationships with like-minded people through our mentor program, social events, team challenges and much more which will see you working hard and playing hard.

What you’ll bring:

• Australian or NZ citizen or Australian Permanent residence only
• Final year student graduating by/between August 2024 and February 2025 or have graduated within the previous 3 years
• An academic background in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Actuarial Science, Engineering, Economics, or related degrees with a distinction average (or equivalent)
• Strong mental math, pattern recognition and probability skills
• Work experience that enhanced your communication, problem solving, analytical, and teamwork skills
• No prior knowledge or coding requirements, just a desire to learn about financial markets and economics theories
• Risk appetite & ability to work well under pressure in a fast-pace, team environment.
• Ability to commence in August 2024 or February 2025.

What you’ll get:

• Structured learning program built upon our flagship Options 101 Course by our dedicated Trader Training Manager
• An attractive base salary, generous bonus structure & relocation package if you’re not from Sydney.
• Professional development, global mobility opportunities & tuition reimbursements to make sure you keep learning.
• Buddy program to help you transition into Akuna, your role and team, as well as build connections and support network
• Catch up with your colleagues over coffee made by our in-house barista & grab a bite to eat in our fully stocked kitchen
• Weekly social events, team competitions & Akuna clubs
• 180-degree views of Darling Harbour in our collaborative, open plan office space in Barangaroo
• Paid volunteer leave to give back to communities and/ causes that are important to you

Do you have strong Quantitative skills?

We hire Junior Quantitative Traders & Researchers that need to have both Maths & Coding skills, so if you have these skills, our Quant team might be the best fit!

• Programming skills in Python or C++ is a must 

Studies or projects in Data analytic, Big Data, Machine Learning, or related fields