Principal Platform Architecture

The OCC

Confirmed live today High trust

Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type: Hybrid
Location: Chicago, IL
Salary: $178,700–$289,100 / yr
Posted: 1 day ago
Freshness: Confirmed live today
Nearby: 99+ roles within 25 mi

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $210k

This role $234k

$127k most similar roles pay here $306k

This role pays more than 75% of similar roles. Most pay $184,018–$235,410 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $234k versus about $210k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About The OCC

The OCC (Options Clearing Corporation) is the world''s largest equity derivatives clearing organization, acting as issuer and guarantor for options and futures contracts to promote stability and market integrity. Industry: Financial Clearing & Derivatives

The OCC currently has 29 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $123,850–$175,650 across 28 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at The OCC

At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Platform Architecture

Role Posting Log in to save

Principal, Platform Architecture joins the Platform Architecture team to define technical direction for core infrastructure across legacy and cloud-native environments. This senior individual contributor role involves designing and owning platform capabilities including container orchestration, streaming infrastructure, cloud architecture, CI/CD, GitOps pipelines, and observability tools. The successful candidate will lead proof-of-concept efforts, establish architectural standards, and manage the migration of workloads to AWS. Key technical requirements include hands-on expertise with Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, and Apache Flink for high-throughput, low-latency clearing workloads. Essential skills involve managing AWS services like EKS, MSK, and S3, alongside GitOps tools such as Terraform, Helm, ArgoCD, or Flux. The role addresses critical market functions by ensuring a resilient, scalable foundation that meets regulatory requirements like Regulation SCI and CPMI-IOSCO principles for financial market infrastructure.

Skills

Kubernetes AWS Apache Kafka Apache Flink Terraform ArgoCD Flux Helm Prometheus Grafana OpenTelemetry Splunk Docker CI/CD GitOps infrastructure-as-code Linux CloudWatch S3 EC2 EKS

What you'll do

Define and own the architecture for core platform capabilities including container orchestration, streaming infrastructure, and cloud systems.
Develop reference architectures and guardrails for Kubernetes workloads, Kafka streaming topologies, and AWS infrastructure patterns.
Lead the migration of legacy workloads to cloud-native patterns on AWS.
Establish GitOps models using infrastructure-as-code practices and automated CI/CD pipelines.
Evaluate new technologies and lead proof-of-concept efforts to validate architectural decisions before implementation.
Define platform-wide observability standards for logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting.
Ensure all platform designs meet high-availability requirements and regulatory compliance standards like Regulation SCI.

What we're looking for

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a similar technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
10+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or systems architecture roles with ownership of enterprise-scale decisions.
Deep hands-on expertise with Kubernetes cluster architecture, workload design, networking, security, and operational patterns at scale.
Hands-on experience architecting Apache Kafka deployments including topic design, partitioning strategy, and schema management.
Practical experience with Apache Flink or equivalent stream processing frameworks for job design and deployment on Kubernetes.
Strong AWS architecture experience across services such as VPCs, EC2, EKS, MSK, S3, IAM, KMS, and networking.
Demonstrated experience implementing GitOps pipelines using tools like Flux, ArgoCD, Terraform, or Helm.
Experience with brownfield/legacy environments, financial services (preferred), and AWS Solutions Architect certification (preferred).

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