Principal, Artificial Intelligence Engineering

The Options Clearing Corporation; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 182,100 - 248,700; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work environment

Tuition Reimbursement

Student Loan Repayment Assistance

Technology Stipend

Generous PTO and Parental leave

401k Employer Match

Health benefits

Job summary

The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is seeking a Principal AI Engineer to lead the hands-on development of agentic AI systems in a regulated financial environment. You will partner with the ED of AI Engineering to shape architecture, drive reliability, and mentor engineers across scalable cloud-based workflows.

You will architect and deploy AI-enabled services on AWS with Claude, ensuring risk controls, auditability, and robust security while collaborating with executive leadership to advance

Qualifications

• Experience mentoring and elevating junior engineers.
• Exceptional ability to explain complex technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders.
• Background in financial market infrastructure, derivatives, or similarly regulated industries.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute OCC's AI technical roadmap with the ED of AI Engineering.
• Lead agentic AI efforts: architect, build, and operate systems connecting AI agents to internal workflows.
• Evaluate model capabilities with AWS and Anthropic tooling; adopt new tooling as available.
• Build and ship production AI applications on AWS using Claude and related tooling.
• Architect scalable systems integrating LLMs and AI agents into internal processes.
• Mentor junior engineers through reviews and best practices.

Skills

Python

SQL

Distributed systems

Microservices

Event-driven architectures

APIs

Data engineering

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

AI/LLM

AI risk management

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science

Tools

Terraform

Claude API

Anthropic Console

Job description

*****THIS POSITION IS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR VISA SPONSORSHIP*****

To be considered for this position, applications and resumes are accepted only through our careers site by directly applying to the posted job. We do not accept unsolicited resumes or sales solicitations from staffing agencies. Any OCC employee wishing to submit a referral must do so through their Workday account. Any resume submitted outside of an active job posting will not be considered for employment.

What You'll Do

OCC is the world's largest equity derivatives clearing organization – the infrastructure that settles every U.S. options trade. We've recently formed a dedicated AI Research & Engineering team and are looking for a Principal AI Engineer to serve as its technical anchor. This is a senior individual contributor role by design. You won't manage people; you'll do the work, set the technical standard, and lead through expertise. You'll be the primary driver of OCC's agentic AI capabilities, architecting and building the systems that connect AI agents to real enterprise workflows in one of the most consequential and carefully regulated environments in financial markets. You'll shape OCC's AI roadmap alongside the Executive Director of AI Engineering, mentor junior engineers, and have time for experimentation with frontier tools. Our team works directly with AWS and Anthropic, accessing Claude models through both.

If you're a seasoned engineer who wants to stay hands‑on, lead through technical excellence, and build agentic AI systems that matter, this role was written for you.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities

• Partner with the Executive Director of AI Engineering to define and execute OCC's AI technical roadmap, translating organizational priorities into concrete architectural decisions.
• Lead OCC's agentic AI efforts: architect, build, and operate systems that connect AI agents to internal systems, data pipelines, and business workflows.
• Leverage OCC's direct relationships with AWS and Anthropic to evaluate and adopt new model capabilities and tooling as they become available.
• Build and ship production AI applications on AWS using Claude and related Anthropic tooling, maintaining high standards for reliability, security, and auditability.
• Architect scalable systems that integrate LLMs and AI agents into OCC's internal systems, operational workflows, and business processes, owning decisions from design through production deployment.
• Serve as the primary technical mentor for junior engineers: conducting code and architecture reviews, modeling engineering best practices, and raising the team's overall technical level (no direct reports).
• Define and enforce AI safety standards appropriate for a regulated SIFMU environment, including hallucination detection, output validation, bias assessment, and audit trails that satisfy SEC and CFTC oversight expectations.
• Establish responsible AI practices and safety guardrails for LLM applications operating on sensitive financial data.
• Navigate OCC's change management and security review processes when deploying AI systems into production.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and provide concrete, risk‑aware recommendations on adoption.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• None

Qualifications

Required

• Experience mentoring and elevating junior engineers.

Preferred

• Exceptional ability to explain complex technical decisions to non‑technical stakeholders.
• Background in financial market infrastructure, derivatives, or similarly regulated industries.

Technical Skills

Required

• Expert‑level Python; proficient in SQL.
• Deep system design expertise: distributed systems, microservices, event‑driven architectures, APIs, and MCP servers.
• Hands‑on experience with data engineering: pipelines, transformation, and data modeling.
• AWS experience; comfort with Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong production AI/LLM experience, or demonstrated hands‑on passion for the space with the engineering depth to ramp quickly.
• Strong working knowledge of AI risk vectors: hallucinations, prompt injection, bias, data privacy, and output validation.

Preferred

• Production experience building and operating LLM‑powered applications.
• Experience designing and operating agentic AI systems in enterprise environments.
• Experience with context engineering strategies including RAG, prompt architecture, and retrieval pipeline design.
• Familiarity with frontier models including Claude, GPT, and Gemini, and hands‑on experimentation with emerging tools.
• Hands‑on experience with Anthropic's tooling and APIs, including the Claude API, Claude.ai, or the Anthropic Console.
• Experience connecting AI agents to enterprise systems and workflows.
• Infrastructure as code (Terraform).

Education and/or Experience

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of software engineering and systems architecture experience, with demonstrated technical leadership.
• 5+ years as a senior individual contributor on complex, high‑stakes production systems.

Certificates or Licenses

• None required.

About Us

The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is the world's largest equity derivatives clearing organization. Founded in 1973, OCC is dedicated to promoting stability and market integrity by delivering clearing and settlement services for options, futures and securities lending transactions. As a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility (SIFMU), OCC operates under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. OCC has more than 100 clearing members and provides central counterparty (CCP) clearing and settlement services to 19 exchanges and trading platforms.

Benefits

• Hybrid work environment, up to 2 days per week of remote work.
• Tuition Reimbursement to support your continued education.
• Student Loan Repayment Assistance.
• Technology Stipend allowing you to use the device of your choice to connect to our network while working remotely.
• Generous PTO and Parental leave.
• 401k Employer Match.
• Competitive health benefits including medical, dental and vision.

Compensation

• The salary range listed for any given position is exclusive of fringe benefits and potential bonuses. If hired at OCC, your final base salary compensation will be determined by factors such as skills, experience and/or education.
• In addition, we believe in the importance of pay equity and consider internal equity of our current team members as part of any final offer.
• We typically do not hire at the maximum of the range in order to allow for future and continued salary growth. We also offer a substantial benefits package as noted on www.theocc.com/careers.
• All employees may be eligible for a discretionary bonus. Discretionary bonuses are based on various factors, including, but not limited to, company and individual performance and are not guaranteed.

Salary Range: $182,100.00 - $248,700.00

Incentive Range: 23% to 30%

OCC is an Equal Opportunity Employer.