Principal - Test Lead

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.

We are seeking an experienced Principal Test Lead to drive quality assurance strategy and execution for our Deposits engineering team. This role requires deep banking domain expertise combined with hands‑on test automation experience to coordinate integrated testing across multiple teams and vendors, ensuring comprehensive full stack testing coverage.

• Design and coordinate integrated test plans across Agile teams, vendors, Contact Center, Operations, and Enterprise
• Define comprehensive full stack test strategy covering UI, API, services, database, and integration layers
• Establish test environment requirements for complete stack validation
• Define test data management and data conditioning frameworks
• Drive end‑to‑end testing execution across all testing teams and technology layers

• Facilitate full stack testing activities across multiple work streams:
  Frontend/UI Layer:
  User interface, user experience, accessibility
• API Layer: REST services, GraphQL, microservices
• Business Logic Layer:
  Application services, workflows, business rules
• Data Layer:
  Database operations, data integrity, persistence
• Integration Layer:
  Third‑party systems, vendor integrations, internal services
• Ensure proper test coverage for deposits functionality across entire stack
• Coordinate performance testing initiatives (load, stress, scalability)
• Monitor test script execution and burndown metrics

• Create and maintain defect tracking dashboards in JIRA
• Establish defect reporting standards (CIF, environment, reproduction steps, screenshots, request/response, expected vs. actual, stack layer affected)
• Coordinate defect remediation across teams and technology layers
• Facilitate assignment and defect triage meetings
• Track defect aging and escalating blockers
• Set defect priorities (Critical/High/Medium/Low, MVP classification)

• Provide initiative‑level test status reporting (Daily/Weekly/Governance)
• Define testing health status criteria (Red/Yellow/Green) across all stack layers
• Track environment metrics (availability, outages, uptime targets)
• Generate defect and test script burndown charts
• Report test coverage by stack layer (UI, API, services, database, integration)
• Identify and communicate blockers, issues, risks, and watch items
• Develop remediation plans and mitigation strategies

• Lead routine testing ceremonies:
  Assignment Meetings:
  Record team assignments, set priorities
• Defect Meetings:
  Review assignments, set fix dates, identify blocked scripts
• Ensure structured status reporting from individual teams and vendors
• Coordinate with vendor testing…