Director, Data Lake and Integration

The Director of Data Lake and Integration will provide technical and architectural leadership within the data engineering organization. In this role, you'll champion building out an enterprise data lake across the businesses, which is critical to the success of modernization and growth at Credit Acceptance. This includes all the first-party and third-party data, data modeling about business-critical data across the ecosystem, as well as data integration both within the company and with external partners. As a director, you'll be responsible for leading the technical vision, strategy, architecture, and execution of the enterprise data lake, collaborating both within the data team and outside to ensure successful deliveries in production, representing the data team in collaborating with business to ensure data availability that supports business priorities and successful usage of the data. The ideal candidate brings 15+ years of engineering experience with significant depth in building enterprise big data solutions with demonstrated impact on business success. You'll serve as both a hands-on technical leader and a strategic advisor, helping to establish robust, scalable enterprise data foundations that drive growth, enable innovation, and improve efficiency across the organization.

Outcomes and Activities:

• This position will work from home; occasional planned travel to an assigned Southfield, Michigan office location may be required.  However, this position is permitted to work at a Southfield, Michigan office location if requested by the team member.
• Develop and drive the long-term vision for enterprise data lake and integration, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and priorities 
• Formulate and implement data lake and integration strategy across the data space, including but not limited to first-party/third-party data, structured/unstructured data, data modeling across the data ecosystem, and integration both within and outside the company
• Oversee the design and development of a scalable enterprise data lake that supports different use cases across the company and enables scalable and self-serve data success
• Lead the development and continuous evolution of scalable, robust, and business-aligned enterprise data lake and integration, driving the adoption of modern architecture and design, including cloud-native services, distributed computing, and real-time data processing.
• Effectively communicate data lake success, strategies, roadmap, and progress to executive leadership and stakeholders, ensuring alignment with the firm’s broader vision and goals.
• Develop insightful business and domain knowledge, translate data into actionable insights that enable the business to drive growth, foster innovation, and improve efficiency
• Build a strong engineering organization and foster a solid engineering discipline by leading with examples and mentoring team members
• Collaborate with both the data team and cross engineering on technology and architecture strategy and decision
• Exemplify technical innovation and contribute to critical system design, implementation, and operation success
• Formulate a technology and architecture decision framework that embeds the engineering discipline
• Become an expert in the business process domain to better support the business and align technologies with the business outcomes
• Work with the engineering leadership team to develop and execute on the company’s technical and business strategy
• Conduct impact analysis to proactively identify the impact of a change across multiple applications/systems
• Perform technical due diligence and architectural assessments of third-party technologies and solutions.
• Experiment and test ideas, validate assumptions against needs, reach conclusions, and recommend solutions
• Document standards, best practices, and engineering artifacts so others can easily understand, build, and maintain best-in-class software systems
• Debug the critical problems that arise in production and execute effective solutions within the application and across multiple applications/systems
• Lead continuous learning and process improvement activities to improve design and overall engineering practices
• Grow talent by participating in hiring and mentoring team members

Competencies: The following items detail how you will be successful in this role.

• Customer Empathy: Customer Empathy is the ability to understand the perspectives, pain points, and experiences of customers. It involves actively putting oneself in the customer’s shoes, comprehending their needs and challenges, and using that understanding to provide a better, more customer-centric experience.
• Engineering Excellence: Engineering Excellence is about bringing great craftsmanship and thought leadership to deliver an outstanding product that delights customers and solves for the business. This involves the pursuit and achievement of high standards, best practices, innovation, and superior solutions.
• One Team: A One Team mindset refers to a collaborative approach across the organization, where individuals work together seamlessly, without boundaries, as a single, cohesive team. Shared goals, open communication, and mutual support create a sense of collective purpose. This enables teams to navigate challenges and pursue shared objectives more effectively.
• Owner’s Mindset: Owner’s Mindset involves adopting a set of behaviors that reflect a sense of responsibility, accountability, strategic thinking, and a proactive approach to managing your domain. As an owner, you understand the business and your domain(s) deeply and solve for the right outcome for the domain(s) and the business.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or closely related field of study; or equivalent work experience
• Minimum 10 years of software engineering experience or comparable depth of experience
• Minimum 5 years in senior leadership roles managing managers and large engineering teams
• Experience in the leadership role overseeing strategy and implementation of enterprise data lake and integration with demonstrated business success and impact
• Expert knowledge of software engineering best practices with experience building an enterprise data lake with modern technology and architecture
• Expert understanding and use of modern data technology end-to-end, including but not limited to source system, data integration, data acquisition, data ingestion, data transformation, data aggregation, data governance, business intelligence, data warehouse, data lake, NoSQL, object storage, streaming, etc.
• Extensive experience with enterprise data modeling and integration with demonstrated success
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud computing, and microservices architectures
• Demonstrated success in building a strong engineering organization and attract/recruit/grow/retain talent
• Demonstrated success in building a mission-critical enterprise-class data solution that delivers business impact
• Demonstrated ability to work with business partners, cross-functional team members, and coach and mentor experienced team members
• In-depth experience with building an enterprise big data real-time production system that delivers business success
• Experienced in communicating and articulating technology subjects in the context of business, and providing timely and clear communication
• Well-versed in delivery mechanisms such as Agile

Preferred:

• Financial services or FinTech industry experience

Knowledge and Skills:

• Architecture and Design: Ability to implement world-class solutions that meet the needs of the business and customer, and help deliver growth and innovation.
• Leadership: Be a thought leader and demonstrate leadership to mentor team members, influence change, and drive for the business outcome
• Ability to challenge the status quo and influence stakeholders to create innovative solutions
• Be collaborative with other team members, seeking a diversity of thought to meet business outcomes
• Ability to foster strong relationships across the organization
• Bring a strong understanding of relevant and emerging technologies, provide input and coach team members, and embed learning and innovation in the day-to-day
• Strong experience and understanding of how to connect the work being done and how it drives business value
• Ability to communicate complex technical information (both verbal and written) to all levels, including senior leadership
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

Benefits

• Excellent benefits package that includes 401(K) match, adoption assistance, parental leave, tuition reimbursement, comprehensive medical/ dental/vision and many nonstandard benefits that make us a Great Place to Work 

Our Company Values:

To be successful in this role, Team Members need to be:

• Positive by maintaining resiliency and focusing on solutions
• Respectful by collaborating and actively listening
• Insightful by cultivating innovation, accumulating business and role specific knowledge, demonstrating self-awareness and making quality decisions
• Direct by effectively communicating and conveying courage
• Earnest by taking accountability, applying feedback and effectively planning and priority setting

To create an environment where people do their best work, we focus on the dimensions of Organizational Health. All leaders must:

• Identify the Right People by recognizing top talent
• Set Clear Expectations by managing change and directing others
• Train team members and focus on developing talent
• Performance Manage by ensuring accountability and driving results
• Create the Right Environment by establishing trust and managing conflict
• Maintain the Right Number of team members needed to build an effective team

Expectations:

• Remain compliant with our policies processes and legal guidelines
• All other duties as assigned
• Attendance as required by department

Advice!

We understand that your career search may look different than others. Our hiring team wants to make sure that this would be a fit not just for us, but for you long term.  If you are actively looking or starting to explore new opportunities, send us your application!

P.S.

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