Director of Software Engineering, Platform Services

Credit Acceptance Corporation•San Francisco, CA

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of Software Engineering, Platform Services, provides strategy, leadership, and day-to-day management for Credit Acceptance’s Platform Services organization. The role leads development, enhancement, and support of integrated platform services used by engineering teams to release high-quality software. It defines the company’s approach to AI-assisted and specification-driven development, including coding assistants, agent development frameworks, and the standards and guardrails needed to release their output safely. The director owns the templates, scaffolds, reference implementations, development environments, and inner-loop tooling that help engineers start and deliver work. The role is accountable for the availability, performance, and support model of shared services, including service-level objectives and on-call coverage. It builds adoption of the supported platform path across product verticals and partners with teams operating delivery pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and runtime platforms. The position establishes and reports measures of engineering productivity, platform adoption, service performance, and project progress. It aligns platform strategy with business objectives, priorities, and budget realities; evaluates build, buy, and open-source options; and ensures tooling and shared services meet security, privacy, and audit requirements. It also supports business growth initiatives by aligning technology vision with business strategy. The director builds and manages diverse engineering teams, recruits and develops leaders and technical talent, plans for organizational and technical scaling, and leads change aligned with company objectives. The role provides technical direction and mentorship, gives continuous feedback, addresses underperformance, recognizes contributions, and fosters a results-oriented culture focused on execution, quality, and speed. This position follows a hybrid work model, with two work-from-home days and three standard in-office days each week. Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to the greater Southfield, Michigan area; the greater Bellevue, Washington area; or the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

Requirements

Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science or an engineering/technical discipline; required degrees must be from an institution accredited by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation or equivalent.
10 or more years of experience in highly technical software engineering or technical architecture roles at large organizations or innovative startups.
5 or more years of supervisory, consulting, or team-lead experience, with demonstrated ability to manage multiple teams.
Experience leading adoption of AI-assisted software development at scale, including coding assistants, agentic development workflows, evaluation, and guardrails for releasing generated code.
History of owning production services, including service-level objectives, on-call rotations, and incident response.
Proven ability to consolidate duplicated capabilities into a single supported platform, including migration and decommissioning work.
Demonstrated ability to communicate complex information clearly and promptly to C-level leaders and people at all organizational levels.
Must reside in or be willing to relocate to the greater Southfield, Michigan area; the greater Bellevue, Washington area; or the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
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.
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, outcome-driven culture that embodies company values.
Comfort navigating unclear or nonexistent processes, identifying ineffective processes, and changing them.
History of using data to make decisions and providing a strong technical vision that teams consistently deliver against.
An automation mindset focused on reducing manual interventions where relevant.
Strong executive presence and ability to advance ideas and initiatives while considering the customer’s and company’s best interests.

Nice To Haves

MBA preferred.
Familiarity with agent development frameworks, model access layers, or other AI platform capabilities.
Background in a regulated industry or experience working closely with security, audit, and compliance functions.
Working knowledge of financial services, loan origination systems, web-based applications, and the automotive industry.

Responsibilities

Provide strategy, leadership, and day-to-day management of the Platform Services organization.
Lead development, enhancement, and support of integrated platform services for engineering teams.
Define the company’s approach to AI-assisted and specification-driven development, including coding assistants, agent development frameworks, and safe-release standards and guardrails.
Deliver golden-path templates, scaffolds, and reference implementations, including the frameworks and patterns they establish.
Own development environments and inner-loop tooling, including build and test performance and environment provisioning.
Ensure availability, performance, and support of shared services, including service-level objectives and on-call coverage.
Create and manage a developer platform experience that enables fast, reliable, efficient, and secure delivery, and grow adoption across product verticals.
Partner with teams operating delivery pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and runtime platforms to deliver and support platform capabilities.
Establish and report measures of engineering productivity, platform adoption, service performance, and project progress.
Align platform strategy with business objectives, priorities, and budget realities, evaluating build, buy, and open-source options against operational capability.
Ensure engineering tooling and shared services meet security, privacy, and audit requirements and align with corporate goals.
Support business growth initiatives by aligning the technology vision with business strategy.
Build and manage diverse engineering teams; recruit and develop engineering leaders and top engineering talent.
Set team direction, plan for personnel and technical scaling challenges, and lead organizational change aligned with company objectives.
Translate platform strategy and team needs into technical building blocks, mentor technical output, and keep skills and knowledge current.
Provide continuous feedback, address underperformance, and recognize team members’ strengths and contributions.
Drive a results-oriented culture focused on execution, quality, and speed, maintaining a high quality bar for services other teams depend on.