Principal Software Engineer, Data Platform

Credit Acceptance; United States; Remote; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in the finance sector is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for their Data Platform. This role involves technical leadership, collaboration with teams, and driving innovation in data technology. Ideal candidates will have extensive experience in software engineering and a strong understanding of modern data technologies. The position allows for remote work with occasional travel to Michigan.

Qualifications

• Minimum 15 years of software engineering experience.
• Experience in leading the technical direction of data technology and architecture.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical thought leadership that connects business strategy with success.
• Collaborate with the data team on technology and architecture strategy.
• Debug critical problems that arise in production.

Skills

Customer Empathy

Engineering Excellence

One Team

Owner’s Mindset

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science

Job description

Principal Software Engineer, Data Platform

Join to apply for the Principal Software Engineer, Data Platform role at Credit Acceptance.

Credit Acceptance is proud to be an award-winning company with local and national workplace recognition in multiple categories! Our world-class culture is shaped by dedicated Team Members who share a drive to succeed as professionals and together as a company. A great product, amazing people, and our stable financial history have made us one of the largest used car finance companies nationally.

Our Engineering and Analytics Team Members utilize the latest technology to develop, monitor, and maintain complex practices that help optimize our success. Our Team Members value being challenged, are encouraged to express their ideas, and have the flexibility to enjoy work-life balance. We build intrinsic value by partnering with all functions of our business to support their success and make strategic business decisions. We focus on professional development and continuous improvement while enjoying a casual work environment and Great Place to Work culture!

We're seeking a Principal Software Engineer to provide technical and architectural leadership within the data engineering organization. In this role, you'll take a hands-on approach in championing technology and architecture decisions at the ecosystem level, while role modeling how engineers should think and work. As a principal engineer, you'll be responsible for leading the technical vision, architecture, and implementation strategy across the data ecosystem, collaborating both within the data team and outside to ensure successful deliveries in production, representing the data team in various technical forums across engineering to apply a data lens at the ecosystem level. The ideal candidate brings 15+ years of engineering experience with significant depth in data technology, distributed systems, and cloud. You'll serve as both a hands-on technical leader and a strategic advisor, helping to establish robust, scalable foundations that enable innovation across the organization.

Outcomes and Activities:

• This position will work from home; occasional planned travel to an assigned Southfield, Michigan office location may be required. However, this position is permitted to work at a Southfield, Michigan office location if requested by the team member.
• Provide technical thought leadership that connects and aligns business strategy with success.
• Champion key technology and architecture decision across the data portfolio for current and future success.
• Hands-on and role model how engineers should think and work, foster a strong engineering culture and discipline including “show and tell”.
• Collaborate both with the data team and cross-engineering on technology and architecture strategy and decision.
• Exemplify technical innovation and contribute to critical system design, implementation, and operation success.
• Formulate technology and architecture decision frameworks that embed engineering disciplines.
• Become an expert in the business process domain to better support the business and align technologies with the business outcomes.
• Work with the engineering leadership team to develop and execute on the company’s technical and business strategy.
• Conduct impact analysis to proactively identify the impact of a change across multiple applications and systems.
• Perform technical due diligence and architectural assessments of third-party technologies and solutions.
• Experiment and test ideas, validate assumptions against needs, reach conclusions, and recommend solutions.
• Document standards, best practices, and engineering artifacts so others can easily understand, build, and maintain best-in-class software systems.
• Debug critical problems that arise in production and execute effective solutions within the application and across multiple applications/systems.
• Lead continuous learning and process improvement activities to improve design and overall engineering practices.
• Grow talent by participating in hiring and mentoring team members.

Competencies:

• Customer Empathy: Ability to understand the perspectives, pain points, and experiences of customers. Actively putting oneself in the customer’s shoes, comprehending their needs and challenges, and using that understanding to provide a better, more customer-centric experience.
• Engineering Excellence: Bringing craftsmanship and thought leadership to deliver outstanding products that delight customers and solve business problems. Pursuing high standards, best practices, innovation, and superior solutions.
• One Team: A collaborative approach across the organization, working seamlessly as a single, cohesive team with shared goals, open communication, and mutual support.
• Owner’s Mindset: Adopting behaviors that reflect responsibility, accountability, strategic thinking, and a proactive approach to managing your domain. Deep understanding of the business and your domain(s) to solve for the right outcomes.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or closely related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Minimum 15 years of software engineering experience or comparable depth of experience.
• Experience in leading the technical direction of data technology and architecture.
• Expertise in software engineering best practices with experience building modern data platforms, products, and solutions.
• Deep understanding of modern data technology end-to-end including source systems, data integration, data acquisition, ingestion, transformation, aggregation, governance, BI, data warehouse, data lake, NoSQL, object storage, streaming, etc.
• Experience in building and driving adoption of engineering best practices.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud computing, and microservices architectures.
• Extensive experience in data modeling, design, and messaging.
• Experience working on mission-critical enterprise applications.
• Ability to collaborate with business partners and cross-functional teams, mentoring team members.
• In-depth experience with big data real-time production systems that deliver business success.
• Familiarity with Agile delivery mechanisms.