Senior Director of Software Engineering, Platform Services

Credit Acceptance is proud to be an award-winning company recognized both locally and nationally across multiple workplace categories. Our world-class culture is shaped by dedicated team members who are driven to succeed as professionals individually and together as a team. Backed by a strong product, exceptional people, and a stable financial foundation, we’ve grown into a leading provider of used and new car financing across the country.

The Director of Software Engineering, Platform Services will help to modernize the engineering organization at Credit Acceptance by building and leading teams that deliver two sets of capabilities: the tooling, templates and standards that engineers use to build software, and the shared engineering services that multiple parts of the organization depend on, including internal products such as payments, notifications, consent and document intelligence. This role will be responsible for consolidating services that are used by multiple parts of the organization into a single place, eliminating duplication and modernizing the technology.
Credit Acceptance is adopting AI-assisted and specification-driven development across its engineering organization, and this role will lead that work. It includes the software development lifecycle and the tooling that supports it, the development environments engineers work in, the AI coding assistants and agent development frameworks they use, the golden path templates and reference implementations that make recommended practices the default, and the measurement of whether these investments are improving engineering productivity.
The ideal candidate is someone who can build and lead a platform engineering team to create the foundational tooling and services for Credit Acceptance’s scaling while also creating process and structure for the company’s growth. They should create a team culture of amplifying scale and creating strong advocates within the product verticals. They should have experience leading a high-performance horizontal engineering team, identifying what the company needs and achieving outcomes that push the company forward and accelerate engineering velocity and productivity. Equally important is a track record of delivering internal developer tooling and shared services as products, with the adoption and operational ownership that comes with them.

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 the strategy, leadership and day-to-day management of the Platform Services organization.
• Lead the team in developing, enhancing, and supporting a set of integrated platform services for Credit Acceptance engineering teams to leverage in releasing high quality software to its customers.
• Define the company’s approach to AI-assisted and specification-driven development, including coding assistants, agent development frameworks, and the standards and guardrails required to release their output safely.
• Deliver the golden path templates, scaffolds and reference implementations that engineering teams use to start new work, including the frameworks and patterns those templates establish.
• Own the development environments and inner loop tooling engineers use daily, including build and test performance and environment provisioning.
• Be accountable for the availability, performance and support model of the shared services the organization operates, including service level objectives and on-call coverage for those services.
• Create and manage the Platform Services experience required to quickly, reliably, efficiently, and securely deliver value to developers, and grow adoption across the product verticals so that the supported path is the default path.
• Partner with the teams that operate delivery pipelines, cloud infrastructure and runtime platforms to deliver and support the capabilities this organization builds.
• Establish and report the measures of engineering productivity, platform adoption and service performance, along with the progress of the organization’s projects.
• Refine and deliver on a strategy that aligns platform goals to business objectives, priorities, and budgetary realities, weighing build, buy and open source options against the company’s ability to operate what is selected.
• Ensure Credit Acceptance’s engineering tooling and shared services meet the company’s security, privacy and audit requirements and align with corporate goals.
• Support business growth initiatives from a Platform Services point of view by aligning the technology vision with business strategy.
• Build and manage diverse engineering teams capable of carrying out ambitious platform software initiatives, recruiting and developing engineering leaders and top engineering talent in the Platform Services space.
• Set the direction of the team; anticipate strategic and scaling-related challenges via thoughtful planning, both from a personnel and technical standpoint, and lead organizational change in alignment with the company’s objectives.
• Break down platform strategy and team asks into correct technical building blocks, mentoring the team’s technical output and keeping skills and knowledge current.
• Provide continuous feedback, address underperformance, and recognize the individual strengths and contributions of team members.
• Drive a results-oriented culture with a strong focus on execution, quality, and speed, and keep the quality bar high for the services other teams depend on.

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:

• BS/MS in Computer Science, engineering/technical degree, MBA preferred
• 10+ years of experience in highly technical roles in development or enterprise services, at large organizations or innovative startups
• 5+ years of supervisory, consultant or team lead experience, with demonstrated ability to manage multiple teams.
• Track record of delivering internal developer tooling, developer platforms or shared engineering services that were adopted by other engineering teams.
• Experience leading the adoption of AI-assisted software development at scale, including coding assistants, agentic development workflows, evaluation, and the guardrails required to release generated code.
• History of owning services in production, including service level objectives, on-call rotations and incident response.
• Proven ability to consolidate duplicated capabilities into a single supported platform, including the migration and decommissioning work required.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate with C-Level leaders, conveying complex information in a timely and easily understood way to all levels of the organization.

Preferred:

• Familiarity with agent development frameworks, model access layers or other AI platform capabilities
• Background in a regulated industry, or working closely with security, audit and compliance functions

• Working knowledge of the financial services industry, loan origination systems, web-based applications, and the automotive industry

Knowledge and Skills:

• Working knowledge of the modern developer toolchain, including source control and code review workflows, continuous integration, containers, infrastructure as code, and developer portal or service catalog products.
• Proven ability to think strategically, align technical initiatives with business objectives, and formulate a team’s technical strategy and roadmap in partnership with other teams.

• Success growing a team and fostering a collaborative, ambitious, and outcome-driven culture that embodies company values.
• Comfortable with navigating hard-to-follow (or non-existent) processes and comfortable identifying processes which aren’t working and changing them.
• History of using data for decision making and providing a strong technical vision that your teams deliver against consistently.
• An automation mindset that strives to reduce manual interventions wherever relevant.
• Strong executive presence and ability to advance ideas and initiatives, keeping the customer and the company’s best interest in mind.

Target Compensation: A competitive base salary range from $208,761 – $306,182. This position is eligible for an annual variable bonus of cash and equity, between 20 - 60%. Bonus amounts are based on individual performance. Final compensation within the range is influenced by many factors including role-specific skills, depth and experience level, industry background, relevant education and certifications. 

Candidates who reside in the following major metropolitan areas may be eligible for a premium on top of the posted range based on their specific zone: San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego.

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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

To create an environment where people do their best work, we focus on the dimensions of Organizational Health. All leaders must:

• Identify the Right People by recognizing top talent
• Set Clear Expectations by managing change and directing others
• Train team members and focus on developing talent
• Performance Manage by ensuring accountability and driving results
• Create the Right Environment by establishing trust and managing conflict
• Maintain the Right Number of team members needed to build an effective team

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!

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