Theocc

Principal, Artificial Intelligence Engineering

Chicago - 125 S Franklin · Principal

H1B sponsorship available$182k-$249kDetected 30 days ago

PythonDistributed SystemsSQLAWSDockerKubernetesTerraformCI/CDData EngineeringNLPLLMsRAGAgentic AIA/B TestingHRISResearchLeadershipMentoring

About the role

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.

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.
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.
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
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
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.

The requirements listed are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.
Experience mentoring and elevating junior engineers
Exceptional ability to explain complex technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders
comfort with Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines
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
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each primary duty satisfactorily.
Background in financial market infrastructure, derivatives, or similarly regulated industries

Experience with context engineering strategies including RAG, prompt architecture, and retrieval pipeline design

Expert-level Python; proficient in SQL
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
Production experience building and operating LLM-powered applications
Experience designing and operating agentic AI systems in enterprise environments
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:

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
$182,100.00 - $248,700.00
Incentive Range

A highly collaborative and supportive environment developed to encourage work-life balance and employee wellness.
Tuition Reimbursement to support your continued education
Technology Stipend allowing you to use the device of your choice to connect to our network while working remotely
Generous PTO and Parental leave
Competitive health benefits including medical, dental and vision

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.
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.
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.
We've recently formed a dedicated AI Research & Engineering team, and we're looking for a Principal AI Engineer to serve as its technical anchor.

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.

This listing is sourced directly from Theocc's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.