Matt Rathbun

Chief Technology Officer | Managing Director at The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC)

Chicago, Illinois, United States

About Matt Rathbun

Matt Rathbun is Chief Technology Officer | Managing Director at The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC). Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States.

I approach every problem by understanding how things actually work before deciding what to do. Strategy from depth, not abstraction. That approach has guided 25 years across Microsoft Azure, Two Sigma, and now OCC — the clearinghouse behind every listed equity option in the United States, processing billions of dollars in transactions daily. I wrote the audit methodology that repriced federal cybersecurity assessments and helped build the foundation for FedRAMP. As CSO of Azure Global, I built the security architectures that turned cloud skeptics into customers who trusted Azure with their most critical workloads — attributed with over $1 billion in ARR. At Two Sigma, I was one of the first security leaders to deploy generative AI in production, designing guardrails from scratch because no playbook existed yet. At OCC I came in to lead security, took on Technology Strategy & Innovation, and now serve as Chief Technology Officer, accountable for enterprise architecture, AI, and digital asset infrastructure at a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility. Five chapters, one method. The domain kept widening — compliance, architecture, AI, now all of technology. The way I work hasn't changed in 25 years. I'm a technologist at my core. I stay hands-on with emerging technology so I can set strategy from direct experience. Security is where that discipline was forged, and it's still in everything I build. I bring the same discipline to leadership, studying neuroscience, organizational psychology, and how people actually make decisions. The hardest problems are never just technical. They're about the way trust moves through an institution and the invisible architecture that shapes what people believe is possible. Ownership means going where the problem is. Throughout my career I've taken on responsibilities well beyond my defined scope, because the work that matters rarely stays inside the lines someone drew on an org chart. Six of the load-bearing decisions from those 25 years — the reasoning, the rejected alternatives, the risks I accepted — are written down: https://matt.rathbun.email/decisions. The rest of what I write about security, AI, and the human assumptions underneath both: https://matt.rathbun.email/professional.html

Skills

  • Enterprise Architecture
  • Technology Strategy

Additional experience

  • Chief Security Officer | Managing Director | Head of Technology Strategy & Innovation

    The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC)

    February 2025 – May 2026

Education

  • Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Kansas State University