Principal - Data Science

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 highly independent Data Scientist who thrives on taking end-to-end ownership – from problem framing and data acquisition to modeling, deployment, and impact measurement. This person will be an individual contributor focused on supporting Consumer Auto Servicing. This person will work closely with stakeholders to define high-impact opportunities, design scalable solutions, and ship models and analyses that surface insights and drive business strategy. This person will also mentor developing analytics professionals and connect with other analytics and data science teams to build capabilities. This role is ideal for someone who can navigate ambiguity, consistently deliver high-quality results, and effectively work with cross-functional partners.

The Work Itself

• Partner with strategy, operations, and business leaders to transform ambiguous questions into data-driven solutions that drive measurable outcomes.
• Communicate findings and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical audiences and influence decision-making at multiple levels by making holistic recommendations with considerations for risks, tradeoffs, and blind spots.
• Design, execute, and interpret experiments and analyses to evaluate business strategy changes and quantify impact.
• Build robust, scalable models and analytical solutions; document thoroughly; and implement automated monitoring aligned with Model Risk Management standards.
• Benchmark challenger models and perform rigorous validation (back testing, stability, fairness, and drift) with monitoring and clear acceptance criteria.
• Productionize models and analytics pipelines in collaboration with data and implementation teams, ensuring reliability, observability, and reproducibility.
• Build reliable, documented data pipelines and features from enterprise sources; transform and curate datasets to support analysis, ad-hoc exploration, and model development.
• Develop high-quality data assets: feature stores, standardized metrics definitions, actionable dashboards, and monitoring for model and data quality.
• Own end-to-end project delivery: define problem statements, create project plans, align stakeholders, manage risks, and deliver outcomes on time.
• Manage projects of various size/complexity, day-to-day tasks, and priorities independently.
• Create strong partnerships with key partners, understand organizational goals, and shape roadmaps to support achieving them.
• Establish and promote best practices in modeling, code quality, and experimentation; mentor via code reviews and knowledge sharing (without direct reports).
• Proactively identify and learn new data sources, tools, methodologies, and approaches to improve performance and accelerate delivery.

The Skills You Bring

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience
• Bachelor's degree

Preferred Qualifications:

• Significant experience (5+ years) in analytics, data science, machine learning, or applied statistics with a track record of independently delivering production-impacting work and measurable business impact.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in quantitative/technical discipline (Math, Computer Science, Data Science/Analytics, Applied Statistics, etc.) or equivalent practical experience.
• Domain experience in financial services (preferably auto lending) focused on data/statistical analysis, credit risk, pricing, fraud, or portfolio optimization preferred.
• Strong working knowledge of machine learning algorithms, AWS and cloud development tools, and Data Science/Analytics/BI methodologies.
• Advanced skills in SQL, Python (R or SAS a plus); strong skills in exploratory data analysis, statistical model development, validation/testing, and operation (including performance monitoring).
• Experience with Git/source control (branching, pull requests, code reviews) preferred.
• Advanced knowledge of statistics and experiment design.
• Ability to design, execute, and interpret controlled experiments with focus on translating findings into business decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to tailor narratives and technical details to executives, cross-functional partners, and engineering audiences.
• Experience working with (and ability to influence) matrix partners.
• Learning agility to rapidly understand a business, its context, and its value stream.
• Proactive seeking of answers and takes ownership from problem framing through delivery; doesn’t wait for direction to move work forward.
• Works independently end-to-end and collaborates with partners as needed; adaptable to changing priorities and project needs.
• Comfort working with ambiguous or sparse data; ability to design pragmatic solutions with imperfect inputs.
• Outstanding analytical and problem-solving skills; critical thinker with strong attention to detail.
• Ability to work both independently and collaborate as needed as project demands shift and change.

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.

Key skills/competency

• Data Science
• Machine Learning
• Python
• SQL
• AWS
• Model Development
• Experiment Design
• Data Analysis
• Mentoring
• Problem Framing