Director, Data Platform

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.

• 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.
• Develop and drive the long-term vision for enterprise data platforms and architecture, ensuring alignment with business growth and AI success 
• Formulate and implement data platform strategy across the data space including but not limited to big data, real time, transaction/operational, governance, that transform the way how we work with data in the era of AI
• Oversee the architecture, design and development of scalable data platform that enable self-serve success with various use cases across the company by taking a platform and AI first approach
• Ensure solid production success that meets business need and speed, establish strong finops discipline with timely and insightful info to continuously optimize our economics including forecast, runtime and “showback” to the business
• Effectively communicate data technologies, strategies, roadmap and progress to executive leadership and stakeholders, ensuring alignment with the firm’s broader vision and goals.
• Stay ahead of industry trends and emerging technologies, translating them into actionable initiatives to drive innovation and maintain the firm’s market leadership.
• Build strong engineering organization and foster solid engineering discipline by leading with examples and mentoring team members
• 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 framework that embeds engineering discipline
• 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 impact of a change across multiple applications/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 the critical problems which 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

• →Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or closely related field of study; or equivalent work experience
• →Minimum 10 years of software engineering experience or comparable depth of experience
• →Experience in the leadership role overseeing technical direction of data platform, technology and architecture
• →Expert knowledge of software engineering best practices with experience building modern data platform, product and solutions, especially in enabling AI success
• →Expert understanding and use of modern data technology end 2 end including but not limited to source system, data integration, data acquisition, data ingestion, data transformation, data aggregation, data governance, business intelligence, data warehouse, data lake, NoSQL, object storage, streaming etc.
• →Extensive experience with building and driving adoption of software engineering best practices
• →Strong understanding of AI, distributed systems, cloud computing, and microservices architectures
• →Demonstrated success in building strong engineering organization and attract/recruit/grow/retain talents
• →Demonstrated success in building mission-critical enterprise class data platform that delivers business impact
• →Demonstrated ability to work with business partners, cross functional team members and coach and mentor experienced team members
• →In-depth experience with building big data real time production system that delivers business success
• →Experienced in communicating and articulating technology subjects in the context of business and providing timely and clear communication
• →Well versed in delivery mechanisms such as Agile

• Financial services or FinTech industry experience

• 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 and 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.

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

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