Principal, Artificial Intelligence Engineering

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

What You'll Do:

OCC, the world's largest equity derivatives clearing organization, seeks a principal-level AI engineer to serve as the technical lead for the organization's recently formed AI Research & Engineering team. This senior individual contributor role is a technical leader who will lead through expertise and ensure the technical success of the team's work. The position requires a seasoned engineer with strong software engineering experience, technical leadership skills, and foundational knowledge of AI/LLMs with a keen interest in applying these technologies to financial infrastructure. You will play a key role in executing OCC's AI roadmap while mentoring a team of talented junior engineers in driving organizational transformation. As a team leaning into emerging technology, we also support continuous growth and learning by providing time for experimentation with AI tools and technologies.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

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

• Partner with the Executive Director, AI Engineering to help define and execute on OCC's AI technical roadmap
• Lead and partner on the architecture of scalable systems incorporating LLMs and AI into organizational processes and infrastructure
• Design and build production applications in support of organizational use cases
• Provide technical mentorship to junior engineers on engineering best practices and system design (no direct reports)
• Conduct code/architectural reviews ensuring production readiness, safety, and adherence to high security and compliance standards
• Implement testing, evaluation, and monitoring frameworks for AI systems including hallucination detection and bias assessment
• Establish safety guardrails and responsible AI practices for LLM applications in a regulated environment
• Connect AI agents to organizational systems and workflows
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend adoption strategies
• Foster continuous learning culture in a rapidly evolving AI landscape

Qualifications:

The requirements listed are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.  Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the primary functions.

Required

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or related technical field
• 10+ years software engineering/systems architecture experience with strong technical leadership
• 5+ years as senior technical contributor on complex production systems
• Expert in Python and proficient in SQL
• System design expertise: monolithic and microservice architectures, distributed systems, event-driven architectures, APIs
• Hands-on experience in data (e.g., data engineering, data pipelines, data transformation)
• Foundational experience with LLMs and familiarity with multiple frontier lab models (e.g., Gemini, Claude, GPT)
• Familiarity of risk vectors in AI applications including hallucinations, bias, prompt injection, data privacy
• Experience mentoring and reviewing the work of junior engineers
• Exceptional communication skills explaining complex technical concepts
• Strong interest in AI/LLM space with demonstrated commitment to continuous learning

Preferred

• Production experience with AI applications or LLM-powered systems
• Experience with RAG architectures and context engineering
• Familiarity with diverse LLM provider APIs and experience connecting agents to systems
• Experience tinkering with frontier lab tools and products
• Cloud platforms/technologies: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD
• Infrastructure as code: Terraform
• Experience in financial market infrastructure or derivatives industry
• Background in regulated environments

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 highly collaborative and supportive environment developed to encourage work-life balance and employee wellness. Some of these components include:

• 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

Visit https://www.theocc.com/careers/thriving-together for more information.

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

$164,500.00 - $224,000.00

Incentive Range

23% to 30%

This position is eligible for an annual discretionary incentive compensation award, for which the target range is listed above (see Incentive Range). The amount of such award, if any, will be based on various factors, including without limitation, both individual and company performance.

Step 1
When you find a position you're interested in, click the 'Apply' button. Please complete the application and attach your resume.  

Step 2
You will receive an email notification to confirm that we've received your application.

Step 3
If you are called in for an interview, a representative from OCC will contact you to set up a date, time, and location. 

For more information about OCC, please click here.

OCC is an Equal Opportunity Employer