Fellow Engineer - API Platforms

We are seeking a Distinguished Engineer / Fellow to provide senior-most- technical leadership for our API Platform and API Best Practices programs. This role serves as a trusted technical mentor and hands-on architect, engaging early in design cycles to guide architecture, eliminate systemic risk and raise engineering excellence across teams. This Fellow is an elite engineer who will directly design and code critical platform components, mentor senior engineers, and drive cross-team alignment on scalable, secure, and resilient API design., * Be the overall technical authority for API platform, guiding design decisions to ensure simple, resilient, and evolvable solutions that minimize long term technical debt.

• Own and evolve the API platform architecture end-to-end, balancing developer experience with enterprise requirements for scalability, performance, security, observability, and regulatory compliance.
• Serve as a high-level individual contributor to design and build core platform services, shared components, frameworks, CLIs, and adjacent tooling that materially improves developer productivity and platform reliability.
• Mentor senior and principal engineers through active engagement including design sessions, code reviews, architecture walkthroughs, and pair designing- complex systems; model strong platform and systems thinking.
• Lead and influence cross-team council and communities of practice, driving alignment on API design and development standards, versioning strategies, resiliency patterns, serverless and cloud native- design, and backward compatibility.
• Define and institutionalize API standards, patterns, and governance across producer and consumer teams, favoring automated and "built-in" compliance over manual review or process -heavy- controls.
• Make pragmatic and objective decisions when performance, developer experience and other inevitable trade-offs arise.
• Identify systemic architectural risks and scalability limits across the ecosystem; lead cross-team- initiatives to resolve root causes and improve platform durability and operational resilience.
• Ensure platform solutions meet enterprise expectations for security, privacy, accessibility, and audit readiness, including resiliency testing, failure mode- analysis, and graceful degradation strategies.
• Lead, evaluate and apply new technology for high leverage capabilities based on their value to our engineering practice. The work starts with proof-of-technology but does not end until implementation and broad adoption.
• Enable product teams through clear documentation, reference implementations, and technical guidance, reducing cognitive load and accelerating safe adoption of platform capabilities.
• Provide technical assessments for executive leadership.
• Help change the culture of API architecture and design

What Success Looks Like

• Senior engineers actively seek this Fellow out for architectural guidance and mentorship
• Platform decisions are made earlier, faster, and with fewer downstream reversals
• API standards are adopted through enablement and tooling, not enforcement alone
• The platform becomes simpler to use while scaling to more teams and higher traffic

Minimum Qualifications * 9+ years of relevant experience * Bachelor's Degree in relevant field(s) of study or equivalent

Preferred Qualifications * 8+ years of experience writing and reviewing software design specifications in an object-oriented development environment. * Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or other related discipline. * Knowledge of all phases of software development including design, coding, testing, debugging, implementation, and support. * Ability to thoroughly understand the business issues surrounding each project and to respond directly to questions from business clients. * Ability to be a technical authority and work with other team members in a team environment. * Knowledge of standard change management tools and processes. * Highly advanced hands-on knowledge and experience with specific technologies.

What Makes You a Great Fit * Past Roles: Fellow engineer, API Solution Architect, Engineering evangelist * Track Record: Led API transformations, built/operated cloud platforms, and influenced cross-functional teams. * Technical Mastery: Deep hands-on experience with Terraform, AWS cloud, containers, API platforms, API as a business * Soft Skills: Exceptional communicator, influencer, and relationship builder. Humble, collaborative, and not afraid to challenge the status quo (with data and empathy). * Education: Bachelor's in CS/Engineering (or equivalent experience).

Ally's compensation program offers market-competitive base pay and pay-for-performance incentives (bonuses) based on achieving personal and company goals. But Ally's total compensation - or total rewards - extends beyond your paycheck and is designed to support and enrich your personal and professional life, including: * Time Away: competitive holiday and flexible paid-time-off, including time off for volunteering and voting. * 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 and 529 educational assistance programs, tuition reimbursement, and other financial well-being programs. * Supporting your Health & Well-being: flexible health and insurance options including dental and vision, pre-tax Health Savings Account with employer contributions 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 support as well as parental and caregiver leave, back-up child and adult/elder day care program and childcare discounts. * Work-Life Integration: other benefits including LifeMatters Employee Assistance Program, subsidized and discounted Weight Watchers program and other employee discount programs.

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?, 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. Where permitted by applicable law, must have received or be willing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by date of hire to be considered, if not currently employed by Ally. We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with physical or mental disabilities. For accommodation requests, email us at work@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.