Principal - Software Engineer

Ally and Your Career

Ally Financial only succeeds when its people do - and that’s more than some cliché people put on job postings. We love this stuff! We see our people as, well, people - with interests, families, friends, dreams, and causes that are all important to them. Our focus is on the health and safety of our teammates as well as work-life balance and diversity and inclusion. From generous benefits to a variety of employee resource groups, we strive to build paths that encourage employees to stretch themselves professionally. We want to help you grow, develop, and learn new things. You’re constantly evolving, so shouldn’t your opportunities be, too?

Work Schedule: Ally designates roles as (1) fully on-site, (2) hybrid, or (3) fully remote. Hybrid roles are generally expected to be in the office a certain number of days per week as indicated by your manager. Your hiring manager will discuss this role's specific work requirements with you during the hiring process. All work requirements are subject to change at any time based on leader discretion and/or business need.

The Opportunity

The Principal Software Engineer owns the reliability, architecture and modernization of the middleware and cloud platforms that run Ally's consumer-servicing applications. The role spans the full estate: the enterprise middleware platforms in production today (Oracle WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Oracle SOA/OSB, IBM MQ/ActiveMQ) and the cloud-native target state (Kubernetes/Red Hat OpenShift and AWS, provisioned with Infrastructure-as-Code and delivered through GitLab CI/CD).

The engineer sets Site Reliability Engineering standards (SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, capacity plans), serves as the Level 3 technical authority for production incidents, platform migrations from on-premises middleware to cloud-native platforms, and introduces automation - including AI-assisted operations - that reduces manual effort and unplanned outages. All work is performed under financial-services change, audit and security controls.

The Work Itself

Key responsibilities

• Architect, build and operate the middleware and cloud platforms supporting consumer-servicing applications, including Oracle WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Apache/NGINX, Oracle SOA Suite / Oracle Service Bus, and IBM MQ / ActiveMQ messaging.
• Migration and modernization of on-premises middleware workloads to Kubernetes / Red Hat OpenShift and AWS (EC2, EKS, RDS, S3, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch), including capacity sizing, cut-over planning and rollback design.
• Define and implement Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Ansible) and CI/CD pipelines (GitLab, Jenkins) with embedded security scanning, deployment automation and environment consistency across development, test, staging and production.
• Establish Site Reliability Engineering standards: service-level indicators and objectives, error budgets, capacity forecasting, availability engineering and performance baselines; instrument platforms with Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, Dynatrace or AppDynamics.
• Serve as Level 3 technical authority for production incidents and problem management: lead root-cause analysis, implement preventive measures, and drive reduction of recurring incidents and unplanned outages.
• Platform security and governance controls: SSL/TLS certificate lifecycle, LDAP/directory integration, F5 BIG-IP load balancing, firewall and port management, patch management and end-of-life remediation, with evidence that satisfies internal audit and regulatory examinations.
• Execute Incident, Problem, Change and Release Management in ServiceNow in compliance with SLA, governance and regulatory requirements.
• Design and implement AI-assisted operational automation (incident analysis, vulnerability remediation, runbook and documentation generation, knowledge management) and evaluate new AIOps capabilities for adoption.
• Work on technical assessments, feasibility studies and architecture reviews for strategic initiatives; produce system design documents, build guides, runbooks and operational standards.
• Guide engineers across SRE, DevSecOps and Release Management; coordinate with application, security, infrastructure and vendor teams, including offshore support.

Minimum qualifications (required)

Education

• Bachelor's degree, or foreign academic equivalent, in Computer Science, Computer Applications, Information Systems, Information Technology, or a closely related field.
• A Master's degree in one of the fields above with 5 years of experience is preferred.

Experience

• 7 years of progressive, post-degree experience in software, middleware, platform or infrastructure engineering, which must include:
  • 5 years architecting, building and administering enterprise middleware platforms - at least two of Oracle WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Oracle SOA Suite / Oracle Service Bus, IBM MQ or ActiveMQ - including clustering, high availability, SSL/TLS, LDAP integration, performance tuning and capacity planning;
  • 2 years engineering cloud or container platforms - public cloud (AWS, Azure or GCP) and/or Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift or Docker - using Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Ansible, Puppet or Chef) and CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins or GitLab);
  • 3 years providing Level 2/3 production support for mission-critical, customer-facing applications, including incident, problem and change management, root-cause analysis and preventive remediation under SLA commitments.
• Experience in the sub-areas above may be gained concurrently.
• Demonstrated experience leading platform migrations, upgrades or modernization initiatives in an enterprise environment (telecommunications, financial services, government or comparable scale).

Required Technical skills

1. Enterprise middleware architecture and administration - Architect-level on at least two of Oracle WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Oracle SOA Suite / OSB, IBM MQ, ActiveMQ; Apache HTTP Server, NGINX or Tomcat; environment build from the ground up, clustering, connection-pool tuning, SSL/TLS and LDAP integration, upgrades and migrations across Linux/Unix.

2. Cloud and container platform engineering with IaC and CI/CD - Kubernetes / Red Hat OpenShift and public cloud (AWS preferred: EC2, EKS, RDS, S3, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch); Terraform and Ansible; GitLab CI/CD or Jenkins; container image build and deployment automation; F5 BIG-IP load balancing and firewall/port integration.

3. Site Reliability Engineering and L3 production - SLI/SLO and error-budget design, capacity forecasting, availability engineering; observability with Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, Dynatrace or AppDynamics; incident, problem, change and release management in ServiceNow; root-cause analysis and preventive remediation for customer-facing systems

Also required

• Java / J2EE application fundamentals (Spring, Hibernate, JDBC, REST and SOAP services) sufficient to diagnose application-tier issues and advise development teams.
• Shell scripting and automation on Linux/Unix.
• Working knowledge of IT governance frameworks (ITIL) and the change, audit and evidence requirements of a regulated enterprise.
• Ability to communicate technical risk, root cause and remediation plans to engineering leaders and business stakeholders.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience applying generative-AI or AIOps tooling to operations: automated incident analysis, vulnerability remediation, runbook and documentation generation, knowledge management.
• Financial-services or other regulated-industry experience with SOX, FFIEC or GLBA controls.
• Kafka or other event-streaming platforms; Oracle Coherence; UrbanCode Deploy or Nexus.
• AWS Solutions Architect, Red Hat OpenShift or Kubernetes (CKA) certification.
• Experience coordinating 24x7 onshore/offshore support models and vendor-delivered engineering teams.

How We'll Have Your Back

Ally's compensation program offers market-competitive base pay and pay-for-performance incentives (bonuses) based on achieving personal and company goals. Our Total Rewards program includes industry-leading compensation and benefits plus additional incentives that are designed to meet your needs and those of your family so you can get the most out of your career and your life, including:

Time Away: Program starts at 20 paid time off days in addition to 11 paid holidays and 8 hours of volunteer time off yearly (time off days are prorated based on start date and program varies based on full or part-time status and management level).

Planning for the Future: plan for the near and long term with an industry-leading 401K retirement savings plan with matching and company contributions, student loan pay downs and 529 educational save up assistance programs, tuition reimbursement, employee stock purchase plan, and financial learning center and financial coach access.

Supporting your Health & Well-being: flexible health and insurance options including medical, dental and vision, employee, spouse and child life insurance, short- and long-term disability, pre-tax Health Savings Account with employer contributions, Healthcare FSA, critical illness, accident & hospital indemnity insurance, and a total well-being program that helps you and your family stay on track physically, socially, emotionally, and financially.

Building a Family: adoption, surrogacy and fertility assistance as well as paid parental and caregiver leave, Dependent Day Care FSA back-up child and adult/elder care days and childcare discounts.

Work-Life Integration: other benefits including Mentally Fit Employee Assistance Program, subsidized and discounted Weight Watchers® program and other employee discount programs.

Other Compensations: depending on the role for which you are considered, you may be eligible for travel allowances, relocation assistance, a signing bonus and/or equity.

To view more detailed information about Ally’s Total Rewards, please visit this link: https://www.ally.com/content/dam/pdf/corporate/ally-total-rewards-snapshot.pdf

Who We Are:

Ally Financial is a customer-centric, leading digital financial services company with passionate customer service and innovative financial solutions. We are relentlessly focused on "Doing it Right" and being a trusted financial-services provider to our consumer, commercial, and corporate customers. For more information, visit www.ally.com.

Ally is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, marital status, military or veteran status, genetic disposition or any other reason protected by law.

In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, if after review of the position expectations, you believe that you may need a medical accommodation to fulfill the duties of this role, please email [email protected] with details of your accommodation request.

Base Pay Range

$110,000.00 - $180,000.00

An individual's position in the range is determined by the specific role, the scope and responsibilities of the role, work experience, education, certification(s), training, and additional qualifications. We review internal pay, the competitive market, and business environment prior to extending an offer.

Incentive Compensation:

This position is eligible to participate in our annual incentive plan.