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 We are seeking a hands-on Principal Software Engineer to lead the design and delivery of enterprise-scale business automation and AI solutions. This role will identify high-value automation opportunities, architect intelligent workflows, and build secure, scalable platforms that combine software engineering, cloud-native architecture, RPA, APIs, and generative AI to drive measurable business impact.

As a principal-level engineer, you will provide technical leadership across strategy, architecture, implementation, and operational excellence while mentoring teams and shaping engineering standards for AI-enabled automation across the enterprise.

The Work Itself Work with architecture and delivery of enterprise automation solutions spanning workflow orchestration, RPA, APIs, event-driven integration, and AI-powered decisioning.

Design and implement intelligent automation capabilities using large language models, agent-based patterns, document intelligence, and retrieval-augmented solutions where appropriate.

Partner with business, product, risk, and engineering stakeholders to identify high-value opportunities, define solution approaches, and prioritize use cases based on ROI, feasibility, and speed to value.

Establish scalable engineering patterns for automation platforms, including reusable services, APIs, observability, resiliency, security controls, and CI/CD practices.

Guide end-to-end implementation from proof of concept to production, including architecture reviews, code quality, deployment, monitoring, and operational support.

Drive responsible AI and automation practices by incorporating governance, evaluation, security, compliance, and human-in-the-loop controls into production solutions.

Mentor engineers, influence technical direction across teams, and raise the bar on software design, delivery excellence, and measurable business outcomes.

The Qualifications We’re Looking For Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience5+ years of relevant experience

Software engineering experience, including deep expertise in designing and delivering large-scale enterprise applications and platforms.

Hands-on experience with automation engineering, workflow orchestration, API development and integration, and cloud-native solution development.

Proficiency in modern programming languages, with particular depth in Python and Java, and solid software design, coding, and integration fundamentals for enterprise-grade applications and services.

Experience building and integrating AI-enabled solutions, including LLM-based workflows, prompt orchestration,…