Senior Systems Engineer

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, including Akuna's CEO Andrew Killion, 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 Boston.

What you'll do as a Senior Systems Engineer at Akuna:

We are looking for a Senior Systems Engineer to be responsible for Akuna’s Linux server platform health. This person will participate in the design, deployment and maintenance of our high performance platform to support our trading environment. They will also automate daily software and hardware tasks while writing and maintaining scripts and tools. The ideal candidate will be self-motivated, proactive, and able to take ownership of projects and problems with minimal supervision. In this role, you will:

• Manage Akuna’s Linux server infrastructure at domestic and global data centers
• Be responsible for trading system server operations
• Work with developers and other senior infrastructure engineers to investigate new products and techniques to improve efficiency and performance in the environment
• Architect and maintain multi-vendor, tier-based storage solutions
• Manage and maintain trading system messaging middleware
• Provide additional day-to-day support including system analysis, monitoring, and performance tuning, as well as developer workstation support

Qualities that make great candidates:

• Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field
• 5-7 years of systems engineering experience (trading industry experience a plus)
• Advanced Linux knowledge including, but not limited to, kernel bypass, kernel tuning, and customizing kernels
• Deep understanding of virtualization and containerization technologies
• Extensive experience with a variety of Linux distributions (RedHat, Ubuntu ,etc.)
• Deep understanding of system monitoring and configuration management tools (Ansible, Cobbler, SaltStack, and Icinga/Nagios)
• Proficiency in scripting and using automation and orchestration tools such as Python and Bash
• Expertise in troubleshooting multicast and TCP related performance issues
• Experience automating daily software and hardware related tasks
• Demonstrated ability to lead large technical projects
• Experience with automating infrastructure builds, such as CFEngine, NetBoot, Anaconda, Kickstart and Ansible customization
• Familiarity with git or a similar version control tool
• Working knowledge of database systems, including PostgreSQL and MySQL
• Familiarity with Windows environments
• Experience with SOAP and REST APIs a plus