Options Clearing Corporation

Principal, Solution Architecture

Options Clearing Corporation$175K — $282K *
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of relevant experience in technology architecture.
  • BS degree in Computer Science or related field.
  • Experience with large-scale distributed systems and microservices.
  • Deep understanding of event-driven and message-based systems.
  • Familiar with Kubernetes for stateless services deployment.
  • Proficiency in Java, Python, or C# for high-throughput systems.
  • Solid knowledge of cloud ecosystems like AWS and PaaS.

Responsibilities

  • Design architectural frameworks for distributed technologies and microservices.
  • Enforce architectural standards across engineering teams.
  • Develop data architecture strategies for streaming and batch processing.
  • Lead end-to-end solution architecture from ideation to implementation.
  • Troubleshoot complex cross-system issues in application and data layers.
  • Guide implementation of resilient and scalable cloud-native services.
  • Collaborate with teams to translate business needs into technical solutions.

Benefits

  • Collaborative work environment with industry experts in digital transformation.
  • Opportunity to drive innovation in capital markets system architecture.
  • Mentorship and professional growth opportunities.
  • Engagement with cutting-edge technologies in a cloud ecosystem.
  • Support for developing best practices across diverse teams.
Full Job Description

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.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

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

What You'll Do:

You’ll be working alongside experts that are building OCC’s next generation clearing system; and paving the future of digital transformation in the capital markets industry by:

  • 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:

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

  • 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 Options Clearing Corporation

The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is a clearinghouse for equity options and futures options. It was founded in 1973 and is the world's largest equity derivatives clearing organization. OCC operates under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The company provides central counterparty (CCP) clearing and settlement services to 16 exchanges and trading platforms for options, financial futures, security futures, and securities lending transactions. OCC is owned by its member firms, which include most of the major options trading firms in the United States. The company's mission is to ensure that the markets it serves are stable, transparent, and fair, and to protect investors and the public interest.
Learn more about Options Clearing Corporation
Size
1,050 employees
Industry

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