What the interviewer can actually score
This 2027 Akuna Capital Interview separates candidates who can expose their reasoning from those who only state an answer. The useful signal is translating a non-empty two-desk allocation into a power-of-two count and finding its last digit. Practice with the real wording gives a candidate room to organise evidence, trade-offs and checks before the timer starts.
Question shown in the assessment
The original prompt reads:
Akuna is opening two new market making groups trading options on European and Australian stocks, and has hired 30 incoming traders for these two groups. Let N be the number of different ways to assign the 30 traders to the two desks such that each desk has at least one trader. What is the last digit of N?
Responses that fall apart
- Choosing a single group size: There is no fixed number assigned to either desk.
- Dividing by two: The desk labels make swapping every assignment a genuinely different outcome.
- Leaving empty desks in the count: Both extreme assignments must be excluded.
- Losing track of the exponent: Thirty traders means thirty binary choices.
- Overworking the arithmetic: Modulo ten is enough because the question asks only for the last digit.
Build the response from first principles
- Model each trader as one independent binary decision.
- Write the unrestricted count before handling the condition.
- Subtract the two prohibited allocations.
- Find the relevant point in the four-step units-digit cycle.
- State the final digit and the reason the desks remain labelled.
A concise answer is not a rushed answer. It removes background that cannot be scored and preserves the assumptions, choices and verification that prove control of the problem.
Practise beyond this one question
OpenInterview has the complete Akuna Capital interview question set. Reviewing the full set reveals which skills repeat and makes it easier to prepare reusable reasoning without memorising a script.
