Principal, Solution Architecture

The Options Clearing Corporation; Chicago (IL); Híbrido; USD 175 000 - 283 000; Tempo integral

Vantagens oferecidas por esta oferta de emprego

Tuition Reimbursement

Student Loan Repayment Assistance

Technology Stipend

Generous PTO and Parental leave

401k Employer Match

Competitive health benefits

Resumo da oferta

The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is seeking a Solution Architect to lead the architecture of distributed, cloud-native services and data systems. You will shape event-driven and batch processing, define standards, and guide cross-functional teams across engineering, data, and security functions.

The role emphasizes strong communication, ownership, and the ability to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions.

Qualificações

• Experience with event-driven and message-based systems.
• Design architectures across distributed and enterprise platforms including microservices.
• Experience integrating diverse technologies and data at scale.

Responsabilidades

• Design the applications’ architecture across distributed platforms using patterns like event-driven architecture and microservices.
• Define and enforce architectural standards, patterns, and best practices.
• Own end-to-end solution architecture from ideation through implementation and documentation.

Conhecimentos

Event-driven systems

Distributed systems design

Communication skills

Ownership of projects

Mentoring teams

Formação académica

BS in Computer Science or related field

Ferramentas

Kafka

Terraform

Kubernetes

AWS

Git/Jenkins/Docker

ArgoCD

Descrição da oferta de emprego

Job Overview

What We Need: We are building a culture that empowers continued learning, authentic innovation, and constant creativity. We are looking for an individual to join our team as a Solution Architect with the following skills and abilities.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each primary duty satisfactorily.

What You'll Do

• Design the applications’ architecture across distributed and enterprise technology platforms while leveraging patterns such as event-driven architecture, publish/subscribe messaging, and microservices while using infrastructure-as-code (IaC) practices to enable consistent, repeatable, and automated provisioning across environments.
• Define and enforce architectural standards, patterns, and best practices across engineering teams.
• Design streaming and batch-based systems that support both real-time and scheduled data flow across the organization.
• Shape and guide the architecture of message-based systems utilizing Kafka or similar platforms to enable reliable, decoupled, event-driven communication between services.
• Develop and oversee data architecture and integration strategies spanning streaming, batch, and message-based processing to ensure reliable, secure, and efficient data flow across systems.
• Own end-to-end solution architecture from ideation through implementation, including documentation of architectural decisions and system diagrams.
• Guide the development and deployment of distributed, cloud-native services, ensuring resilience, scalability, and cost-efficiency.
• Collaborate with DevOps, platform engineering, and security teams to ensure architectures are operable, resilient, and aligned with organizational standards.
• Review designs and code from engineering teams to ensure alignment with architectural standards, security requirements, and regulatory/compliance needs.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex, cross-system issues spanning application, infrastructure, messaging, and data layers.
• Partner with engineering, data, and business teams to translate business requirements into robust, scalable technical solutions.
• Translate complex architectural decisions and trade-offs into clear, actionable insights for business stakeholders and non-technical audiences to support informed decision-making.
• Evaluate emerging tools, frameworks, and technologies, and provide recommendations for adoption.
• Mentor engineering teams on architectural best practices, distributed systems, event-driven and batch processing design.
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences.

Supervisory Responsibilities

None

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience in one or more of the following domains: event-driven and message-based systems, transaction processing systems, distributed and parallel computing.
• Solid experience designing application architectures across distributed and enterprise technology platforms, including microservices and streaming or batch-based applications.
• Experience with projects involving complex integration of disparate types of technologies/platforms and data.
• Experience architecting large-scale distributed systems.
• Architect Kubernetes-based deployment topology for stateless services and on-demand jobs, including horizontal pod autoscaling, multi-AZ resilience, and cross-region/on-prem failover and disaster recovery strategies (hot-hot, S3 replication).
• Fluent in object-oriented design, industry best practices, software patterns, and architecture principles.
• Experience defining and documenting architecture strategies, designs, and requirements across all enterprise architecture domains – business, information systems (applications & data), and technology.
• Experience defining non-functional requirements (NFRs) including performance, scalability, availability, and security and others as well as ensuring applications’ architecture are designed to satisfy them.
• Highly motivated with a strong sense of ownership of their work/projects.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

Technical Skills

• Software development experience in Java, Python, or C#, including building high-throughput, low-latency services for data-intensive or transaction-oriented systems.
• Strong knowledge of Kafka or other messaging/streaming systems, including topic design, partitioning strategies, and producer/consumer patterns for reliable, event-driven communication.
• Fluent in object-oriented design principles, software design patterns, and modern architecture practices (e.g., microservices, event-driven architecture, domain-driven design), with the ability to apply them to real-world, large-scale systems.
• Knowledge of identity and access management using OAuth2/OIDC flows (client credentials, authorization code with PKCE), JWT-based token validation, and integration with identity providers (e.g., ForgeRock, SailPoint).
• Knowledge of schema management and data serialization formats, preferably Protocol Buffers (Protobuf), including schema evolution.
• Understanding of data lake-house architecture and table formats such as Apache Iceberg.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code principles and tooling preferably Terraform to enable repeatable, automated environment design.
• Working knowledge of DevOps tooling and practices such as Git, Jenkins, Docker, Artifactory, ArgoCD, and others to support automated build, test, and deployment of distributed, containerized applications.
• Experience working with Cloud ecosystems (AWS, PaaS, K8s).

Education and/or Experience

Minimum Qualifications: BS degree in Computer Science, similar technical field, or equivalent practical experience. 10+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications: 6+ years of work experience in the capital markets industry.

Certificates or Licenses

None

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.

More information about OCC is available at www.theocc.com.

Benefits

• A 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: $175,100.00 - $282,800.00

Incentive Range: 23% to 30%

Interviews

OCC does not utilize video chat rooms (that is, Google Hangouts) to conduct interviews. OCC will only use our approved Zoom video interview platform.

Equal Opportunity Employer

OCC is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

OCC is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. OCC provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, citizenship status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, age, marital status, religion, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws. Numerous studies have shown that people from certain groups are less likely than others to apply to jobs if they believe they do not meet 100% of the requirements. We encourage everyone to review our open positions and apply if you think your experience may be a match, even if you do not meet all of the qualifications. Your perspective may be an element we need to continue building innovative solutions to support the markets and market participants we serve.

If you need a disability related accommodation for any part of the application process, please email [e-mail].