Principal Software Engineer, Platform Engineering

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!

At Credit Acceptance, Platform Engineering is focused on engineering Developer platforms in Cloud, SRE, DBRE and DevOps areas to help our development teams build secure, cloud-based microservices. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to assist us to modernize, help drive ‘Golden-Path’ approaches and to guide Platform Engineering strategies across multiple technology domains. The ideal candidate is experienced in cloud, CICD, observability and database automation. Additionally, the ideal candidate has experience in monolith to microservice transformations and building out ‘Golden Path’ Platform Engineering approaches. From day one, you will have an immediate impact on the day-to-day efficiency of our Platform and Tools and an ongoing impact on our overall growth. The Principal Software Engineer for Platform Engineering demonstrates and encourages a culture of automation, security, orchestration, and efficiency. This position is key to driving our Platform Engineering strategy in alignment to our department and business goals.

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 thought leadership and build platform engineering solutions that deliver high impact business value and deliver customer delight
Lead the design and implementation of platform engineering solutions that are scalable, reliable, resilient, reactive and maintainable
Collaborate with a diverse cross functional team including business partners, Product Managers and designers to define product requirements, direction and clarity
Drive technical innovation and improvements of the design and architecture of platform engineering towards leading edge technologies and practices
Define, develop and drive platform engineering best practices
Become an expert in the business process domains 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 impact of a change across multiple applications/systems
Perform technical due diligence and architectural assessments of third-party technologies and solutions
Define developer tooling improvements that will bring efficiency as we decompose a monolithic code base to decoupled services
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 platform engineering systems
In partnership with platform engineering domains, debug the critical problems which arise in production and execute effective solutions
Lead continuous learning and process improvement activities to improve design and overall engineering practices
Grow talent by participating in hiring and mentoring team members
Develop standard architectural practices and lead solutions development across partner engineering groups
Define and document best practices and strategies regarding cloud deployments and maintenance
Ensure application performance, uptime, and scale, maintaining high standards of quality and thoughtful design
Inventory runtime and observability tooling to assist in consolidation and optimization across engineering
Partner with leaders and engineering counterparts to drive improved runtime practices for Site Reliability
Assist in leading the transformation of our database automation practices as we shift from manual DB migrations to pipeline driven DB migrations
Drive strategic cloud direction in partnership with cloud engineering team; inclusive of a comprehensive FinOps strategy to ensure cloud cost optimization is a continuous focus

Competencies: The following items detail how you will be successful in this role .

Customer Empathy: Customer Empathy is the ability to understand the perspectives, pain points, and experiences of customers. It involves 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: Engineering Excellence is about bringing great craftsmanship and thought leadership to deliver an outstanding product that delights customers and solves for the business. This involves the pursuit and achievement of high standards, best practices, innovation, and superior solutions.
One Team: A One Team mindset refers to a collaborative approach across the organization, where individuals work together seamlessly, without boundaries, as a single, cohesive team. Shared goals, open communication and mutual support create a sense of collective purpose. This enables teams to navigate challenges and pursue shared objectives more effectively.
Owner’s Mindset: Owner’s Mindset involves adopting a set of behaviors that reflect a sense of responsibility, accountability, strategic thinking, and a proactive approach to managing your domain. As an owner, you understand the business and your domain(s) deeply and solve for the right outcome for the domain(s) and the business.

Requirements:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or closely related field of study; or equivalent work experience
Minimum 10 years of cloud, infrastructure, site-reliability and pipeline automation experience or comparable depth of experience
Experience developing and managing Infrastructure as Code, leveraging tools such as Terraform, Ansible, GitHub, etc.
Experience in the lead role overseeing technical direction of a team of platform engineering talent across multiple systems
Expert knowledge of cloud and runtime best practices with experience building backend platforms to support complex software engineering products
Experience in observability and resilience at runtime inclusive of APM, RUM, Logging, Circuit-Breaker patterns as well as release strategies like Blue/Green and Canary
Proven track record driving continuous improvements with cloud technology
Extensive experience with building and driving adoption of platform engineering best practices
Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud computing, and microservices architectures
Demonstrated ability to work with business partners, cross functional team members and coach and mentor experienced team members
Well versed in delivery mechanisms such as Agile

Preferred:

Financial services or FinTech industry experience
Experience in a hybrid Cloud/Data Center environment supporting various multi-tier and microservice applications
Experience in driving runtime best practices for observability, tooling consolidation
Experience with SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS deployments in the Cloud
Experience developing and maintaining performance metrics and graphs
Depth in experience helping lead enterprise-wide Cloud transformations in AWS
Moderate experience in Azure, Oracle and Google Cloud platforms
Experience with Kubernetes cluster and orchestration platforms (EKS, Rancher)
Experience in automating builds on a Kubernetes platform
Experience with backup and data protection technologies
Understanding of Oracle database technologies (Oracle, GoldenGate and OEM)
Experience with AWS native database technologies like RDS and Aurora
Experience with alerting tools like PagerDuty
Understanding of Site-Reliability best practices such as Post-Mortems, ‘Golden-Signals’ and Production Readiness Reviews
Experience working with monitoring/trending software such as CloudWatch, ELK, Splunk, etc.
Advanced knowledge of DevOps processes and building ‘Golden-Path’s for Developers leveraging internal developer portals, automation, etc.

Knowledge and Skills:

Architecture and Design: Ability to implement world class solutions that meet the needs of the business and customer and help deliver growth and innovation
Leadership: Be a thought leader and demonstrate leadership to mentor team members, influence change and drive for the business outcome
Ability to challenge the status quo and influence stakeholders to create innovative solutions
Be collaborative with other team members, seeking a diversity of thought to meet business outcomes
Ability to foster strong relationships across the organization
Bring a strong understanding of relevant and emerging technologies, provide input, coach team members and embed learning and innovation in the day-to-day
Strong experience and understanding of how to connect the work being done and how it drives business value
Ability to communicate complex technical information (both verbal and written) to all levels, including senior leadership
Ability to work independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced, dynamic environment

Target Compensation: A competitive base salary + an annual variable bonus (cash and equity) will range from $213,360 - $365,083. This position will also be eligible for a sign-on RSU grant.

This position is not currently open to individuals who require sponsorship now or in the future to work legally for Credit Acceptance, such as H-1b / H-4 or F-1 OPT visa holders.

INDENGLP

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Benefits

Excellent benefits package that includes 401(K) match, adoption assistance, parental leave, tuition reimbursement, comprehensive medical/ dental/vision and many nonstandard benefits that make us a Great Place to Work

Our Company Values:

To be successful in this role, Team Members need to be:

Positive by maintaining resiliency and focusing on solutions
Respectful by collaborating and actively listening
Insightful by cultivating innovation, accumulating business and role specific knowledge, demonstrating self-awareness and making quality decisions
Direct by effectively communicating and conveying courage
Earnest by taking accountability, applying feedback and effectively planning and priority setting

Expectations:

Remain compliant with our policies processes and legal guidelines
All other duties as assigned
Attendance as required by department

Advice !

We understand that your career search may look different than others. Our hiring team wants to make sure that this would be a fit not just for us, but for you long term. If you are actively looking or starting to explore new opportunities, send us your application!

P.S .

We have great details around our stats, success, history and more. We’re proud of our culture and are happy to share why – let’s talk!

Required degrees must have been earned at institutions of Higher Education which are accredited by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation or equivalent.

Credit Acceptance is dedicated to providing a safe and inclusive working environment for all. As part of our Culture of Compliance, we are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and value our culturally diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment regardless of the person’s age, race, color, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status, criminal history, or any other legally protected characteristic.

California Residents: Please click here for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) notice regarding the personal information Credit Acceptance may collect from you.