Senior Software Engineer - Data Solutions

Join Credit Acceptance, an award-winning company recognized both locally and nationally for our outstanding workplace culture! We pride ourselves on our dedicated Team Members who drive success as professionals and as a unified organization. Our combination of innovative products, exceptional people, and solid financial history has made us one of the largest used car finance companies in the nation.

As a part of our Engineering and Analytics Team, you will utilize cutting-edge technology to develop, monitor, and maintain complex processes that optimize our achievements. We encourage our Team Members to embrace challenges, share creative ideas, and enjoy a healthy work-life balance. By collaborating with all business functions, we aim to support strategic decision-making and enhance professional development while fostering a casual and rewarding work environment.

Key Responsibilities

• This position allows for remote work; occasional planned travel to the Southfield, Michigan office may be necessary, but team members have the option to work from the office if desired.
• Design and implement essential components of the data platform (e.g., data lake, streaming infrastructure, DaaS, catalog) with a focus on scalability, reliability, and observability.
• Balance hands-on delivery with architectural foresight, contributing to cross-functional initiatives that enhance the platform.
• Collaborate with data and engineering stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver efficient solutions for data acquisition, transformation, and integration.
• Write unit and integration tests to validate software against acceptance criteria, ensuring reliability of the platform.
• Promote team standards for coding, documentation, and testing, ensuring high quality and maintainable engineering practices.
• Conduct impact analysis to identify dependencies and evaluate potential risks associated with changes across applications and services.
• Gain a deep understanding of platform use cases and business processes to align technical solutions with organizational needs.
• Experiment with new tools and methodologies; validate assumptions and recommend enhancements to the platform's capabilities.
• Participate in design and code reviews, providing constructive feedback and communicating changes effectively.
• Document platform components and designs to ensure projects remain maintainable and comprehensible.
• Troubleshoot and resolve production issues, proposing effective solutions to restore platform stability.
• Contribute to sprint commitments and actively engage in Agile practices, including retrospectives and process improvements.
• Embrace continuous learning to deepen knowledge of modern data platform technologies, distributed systems, and engineering best practices.

Core Competencies

• Customer Empathy: Ability to understand customer perspectives and needs to provide a better experience.
• Engineering Excellence: Deliver outstanding products through high standards, best practices, and innovative solutions.
• One Team: Collaborative mindset, working as a unified team toward shared goals.
• Owner's Mindset: Actively take responsibility and strategic thinking to manage your domain effectively.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field; or equivalent experience.
• Minimum of 5 years of software engineering experience, specifically in building and maintaining data platforms or distributed systems within cloud environments.
• Strong knowledge of software engineering best practices, with hands-on experience in data platforms, products, or solutions.
• Experience deploying and supporting applications on cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), including containerized services (Docker, Kubernetes, ECS/EKS).
• Familiarity with lakehouse principles (Delta Lake, Iceberg, Hudi) and best practices for schema evolution and performance optimization.
• Experience with observability practices and tools (e.g., Dynatrace, Splunk, CloudWatch) to ensure platform reliability.
• Knowledge of data storage technologies, including object stores (S3, ADLS, GCS), relational databases, and NoSQL systems.
• Understand data governance and security practices, ensuring alignment with organizational standards.
• Solid grasp of distributed systems concepts and their relevance to data platforms.
• Experience with enterprise-class applications where uptime and reliability are critical.
• Strong programming skills in languages commonly used for platform engineering (e.g., Python, Java, Scala, Go).
• Ability to mentor and guide less experienced engineers, fostering team growth.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and software development lifecycle practices.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with lakehouse technologies (Delta, Iceberg, Hudi).
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration frameworks (e.g., Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, Databricks Workflows).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment.
• Advanced knowledge of observability tooling (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana) beyond the basics.
• Experience optimizing performance issues and scaling systems.
• Experience in the financial services or FinTech industry.

Knowledge and Skills

• Expertise in designing platform components with a focus on scalability and maintainability.
• Collaborative mindset to deliver high-quality solutions.
• Exploratory approach toward new tools or practices to enhance the platform.
• Active participant in code reviews and team-level knowledge sharing.
• Technical proficiency in cloud, data, and platform technologies.
• Understanding of how technical work supports business outcomes.
• Effective communication in technical discussions and documentation.
• Independent working skills on defined tasks while seeking guidance when needed.

Target Compensation

The competitive base salary range is $130,047 - $190,735, with eligibility for an annual variable cash bonus of 7.5 - 15%. Final compensation is based on factors such as role-specific skills, experience level, industry background, and education.

Candidates in major metropolitan areas like San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, and San Diego may receive a compensation premium based on their specific zone.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits including 401(K) match, adoption assistance, parental leave, tuition reimbursement, medical/dental/vision coverage, and unique perks that contribute to our Great Place to Work status.

Our Company Values

To thrive in this role, Team Members should exemplify:

• Positivity through resilience and solution-focused thinking.
• Respect through collaboration and active listening.
• Insight through innovation, knowledge accumulation, and quality decision-making.
• Directness in communication and courageous expression.
• Earnestness in accountability, feedback acceptance, and effective planning.