Akuna Capital Interview Questions — Page 3

Akuna Capital·Data Scientist·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Interviewed for a Data Scientist role at Akuna Capital and got hit with a pretty involved algorithmic problem that felt more like a software engineering screen than anything data-science-y. The question was well-defined but had enough layers that I had to think carefully before writing a single line of pseudocode.

Given an array of n integers representing net profit per item and a threshold T, find the maximum number of disjoint pairs (i, j) such that profits[i] + profits[j] >= T. Design an O(n log n) solution using sorting and two pointers, prove it correct, analyze complexity, and handle edge cases like odd n, negative values, and extreme values of T.

“This one took me a minute to even parse.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Got a coding problem at Akuna Capital for a Software Engineer role that was basically about designing a two-user communication channel with proper state management and custom exceptions. Pretty classic OOP design question but with enough edge cases to trip you up if you're not careful.

Design and implement a communications handler that manages a one-at-a-time conversation channel between exactly two distinct users. You need a custom exception type, an abstract base class with connect, hangup, and clear_all methods, and a concrete implementation that enforces all the stated constraints.

“The abstract base class part was fine, I've done that kind of thing before.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Akuna Capital coding screen focused entirely on a rate limiter design problem for a trading engine context. Pretty applied, less algorithmic than I expected, more about getting the sliding window logic right and writing clean test cases.

Design and implement a class that a trading engine can use to check how many order messages can be sent at a given timestamp without exceeding a configurable rate limit, where the time window is a continuous sliding window and batching is supported.

“The example they gave made it look deceptively simple.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Short technical screen at Akuna Capital, just one coding problem focused on bit manipulation. Nothing fancy, but it's the kind of question that trips you up if you haven't thought about popcount in a while.

Given an array of integers, write a function that returns the total count of set bits (1-bits) across all elements in the array. The signature is: uint64_t count_bits(int* arr, uint64_t size).

“Straightforward if you know popcount exists.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026

Akuna Capital software engineer interview with a pretty involved C++ design problem centered on market making logic. The question had a lot of moving parts and felt more like a mini system design than a typical coding screen.

In C++, design and implement an InstrumentQuoter class that manages bid and offer orders for a single instrument on a BBO market. The class must enforce a minimum offset from a theoretical price, align prices to exchange tick sizes, avoid crossing the exchange BBO, and handle per-side state transitions so no new order is sent on a side until the previous one is confirmed removed.

“This one took me a while to even mentally decompose.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026

Akuna Capital coding screen, pretty focused on financial data processing. One problem, real-time flavor, not too long but the edge cases kept me busy.

Build a system that computes a moving average over a live stream of market prices and emits a trading signal whenever the moving average crosses a fixed threshold.

“Seemed straightforward at first.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026

Akuna Capital system design screen for a software engineering role. The question was pretty focused, more like a mini design exercise than a full-scale distributed systems thing, but there were enough layers to trip you up if you weren't careful.

Design a lightweight in-memory communication manager between users. Implement connect, disconnect, and clear functions, define your data structures and method signatures, discuss time/space complexity, edge cases, concurrency, and include a testing plan.

“I went straight to a hash map of adjacency sets and felt pretty good about it.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Jun 2026

Graph problem for a Data Engineer role at Akuna Capital. One coding question, submitted in Java, felt more like a pure algorithms screen than anything data-engineering specific.

Given a set of nodes and an undirected edge list, build an adjacency list and find all connected components using BFS. For each component, compute the difference between the maximum and minimum node IDs. Return the largest such difference across all components.

“Took me a minute to realize the answer isn't just a global max minus global min across all nodes.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026

Interviewed for a software engineering role at Akuna Capital and got a system design-flavored coding question about building a small in-memory communication manager. Pretty focused interview, no fluff.

Design a simple in-memory communication manager that supports connecting two users, disconnecting two previously connected users, and clearing all connections. Walk through your data structure choices, write the code, and analyze time and space complexity.

“I went with an adjacency list using a hash map of sets, which felt right for this kind of undirected relationship problem.”

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Akuna Capital·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jul 2026

Coding round at Akuna Capital for a software engineering role. The problem looked deceptively simple at first glance but the edge cases kept piling up as I got deeper into it.

Design and implement a communication connection manager: a custom exception class and a handler class that supports connecting two users, hanging up a connection, and clearing all connections. Each user can only be in one active connection at a time, and the handler must enforce this along with other constraints like self-connections.

“The hash map approach came to me pretty fast, user maps to their current partner, bidirectional.”

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