Principal Software Engineer - API Platform

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 live 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 Principal Software Engineer to serve as a technical authority for Ally’s API Core Engineering division. You will lead the design, development, and evolution of our API platform, frameworks, and tooling that power enterprise-scale services. You’ll partner closely with platform, security, SRE, and application teams to drive adoption, reliability, and developer productivity across the SDLC.
The Work Itself

• Act as a technical authority across design, coding, testing, debugging, deployment, and support for the API platform and developer tooling.
• Own the platform roadmap for API Core Engineering in partnership with product and platform leadership; drive architectural decisions and standards.
• Design and implement applications, frameworks, CLIs, and libraries that improve developer productivity, reliability, and SDLC efficiency.
• Build and maintain platform services and components in Node.js (TypeScript/JavaScript); contribute high-quality, testable, and observable code.
• Develop comprehensive automated tests using Node.js testing frameworks (e.g., Jest, Mocha, Chai) and enforce testing best practices.
• Design and enhance CI/CD pipelines, tooling, and templates using GitLab CI, Python, and shell scripting; champion release automation and quality gates.
• Lead upgrades, operational support, and incident response for the API platform; drive root cause analysis and long-term resiliency improvements.
• Architect and deliver solutions on public cloud (AWS preferred), leveraging Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and modern DevOps practices.
• Define and evolve standards for API and microservices (REST, security, observability, performance, documentation).
• Partner with enterprise development teams to accelerate adoption of the API gateway and internal frameworks; provide guidance, patterns, and enablement.
• Mentor engineers, perform design/PR reviews, and cultivate engineering excellence and platform thinking.

Skills
The Skills You Bring
Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of relevant experience
• Bachelor’s Degree in relevant field(s) of study or equivalent

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with deep expertise in Node.js and TypeScript/JavaScript.
• 2+ years in senior or principal roles.
• Proficiency in Python and scripting (Bash/Zsh) for tooling, automation, and CI/CD integration.
• Strong experience with automated testing in Node.js (Jest, Mocha, Chai or equivalent) and a quality-first mindset.
• Hands-on experience building and operating services on public cloud (AWS strongly preferred).
• Experience designing and developing APIs or microservices (REST), including versioning, authentication/authorization, and documentation.
• Proven experience with DevOps toolchains: GitLab (CI/CD), Terraform (IaC), and Git-based workflows.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, reliability, performance, and observability (logging, metrics, tracing).
• Strategic thinker with hands-on problem-solving skills.

Nice-to-Haves:

• Experience with API Gateways (e.g., Kong, Apigee, AWS API Gateway, NGINX) including policies, plugins, and operational support.
• Background working with or within Platform/Enablement teams; experience driving enterprise-wide tooling adoption.
• AWS certifications and/or deep AWS service knowledge (ECS/EKS/Lambda, API Gateway, IAM, CloudWatch, CloudFormation/Terraform).
• Familiarity with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes), and secrets/config management.
• Experience establishing coding standards, reusable templates, golden paths, and developer portals.

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.
We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with physical or mental disabilities. For accommodation requests, email us at hrpolicy@ally.com. Ally will not discriminate against any qualified individual who is capable of performing the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.
Base Pay Range
: $110000 - $180000 USD
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.