Associate Principal Jobs in Wheaton, IL (NOW HIRING)

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.

OCC's AI Research & Engineering (AIRE) team is building the company's first generation of agentic AI capabilities on Anthropic's Claude models and AWS infrastructure. The Associate Principal, AI Engineering owns the design and delivery of agentic AI systems end-to-end, mentors junior engineers, and contributes technical judgment on AI application and/or AI infrastructure work in a largely greenfield environment.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

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

• Own the design and delivery of agentic AI systems end-to-end, from architecture through production deployment
• Architect agent orchestration patterns, tool and context integration, and evaluation pipelines for reliability in a regulated environment
• Own AI infrastructure supporting AIRE's agents and applications on AWS, and contribute to the team's growing infrastructure self-sufficiency
• Implement technical safeguards against AI-specific risks, including hallucination detection, prompt injection defense, and output validation, in collaboration with OCC's AI Governance function
• Build audit logging and human-in-the-loop checkpoints into agentic workflows so agent actions remain traceable and reviewable in a regulated environment
• Mentor Associate and Senior Associate engineers through code and architecture review
• Contribute technical point of view to the team's evolving engineering standards and practices, in partnership with the Executive Director

None (no direct reports; mentors junior engineers without formal supervisory authority)

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.

• Experience mentoring or elevating the work of junior engineers
• Demonstrated ownership of production systems from design through deployment
• Ability to work effectively in a still-forming, fast-moving team environment
• This position is not eligible for employment visa sponsorship. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for sponsorship now or in the future.

Technical Skills:

• Required: Strong Python; proficient SQL; solid distributed systems and API design fundamentals
• Required: Hands-on experience building LLM-powered applications or agentic systems
• Required: Working knowledge of AI-specific risk areas (prompt injection, output validation, hallucination mitigation, data privacy), or demonstrated ability to build this expertise quickly
• Required: Cloud infrastructure experience (AWS preferred); comfort with Docker, CI/CD, and containerization fundamentals
• Preferred: Direct experience with Claude, the Anthropic API, or Claude.ai/Console
• Preferred: Experience designing agent orchestration or Model Context Protocol (MCP)-based integrations
• Preferred: Production experience operating LLM-powered applications or agentic systems at scale
• Preferred: Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform)
• Preferred: Background in financial services, derivatives, or other regulated industries
• Preferred: Exposure to AI security practices such as red-teaming or adversarial testing of model inputs and outputs
• Preferred: Data engineering experience (pipelines, data modeling), particularly for candidates interested in AI infrastructure work

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field; Master's preferred
• 4-7 years of software engineering experience, with production AI/LLM systems experience preferred

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. 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

Incentive Range

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
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Step 2
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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