Machine Learning Engineer, Senior Manager

Credit Acceptance Careers

Credit Acceptance is proud to be an award-winning company with local and national workplace recognition in multiple categories! Our world-class culture is shaped by dedicated Team Members who share a drive to succeed as professionals and together as a company. A great product, amazing people and our stable financial history have made us one of the largest used car finance companies nationally.

Our Engineering and Analytics Team Members utilize the latest technology to develop, monitor, and maintain complex practices that help optimize our success. Our Team Members value being challenged, are encouraged to express their ideas, and have the flexibility to enjoy work life balance. We build intrinsic value by partnering with all functions of our business to support their success and make strategic business decisions. We focus on professional development and continuous improvement while enjoying a casual work environment and Great Place to Work culture!

Job Summary

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Leader of ML and AI Engineering within the AI team. The ideal candidate will have a strong technical background in decision science, machine learning, and generative AI with a proven track record in solving business problems and implementing large-scale automated solutions in partnership with the respective engineering teams. The leader will partner with business and engineering stakeholders to formulate the vision to achieve the company’s strategic goals and co-lead the roadmap to deliver innovative solutions for dealers, consumers, and team members. As a Senior Manager, MLE at Credit Acceptance, you will play a pivotal role in the success of this mission as you will lead the development of AI-powered solutions across different business areas. This involves understanding the business processes, identifying new opportunities to add value using ML/AI algorithms, and harnessing data sources to build state-of-the-art ML/AI solutions.

Outcomes and Activities:

• Lead the vision and the strategic execution with a strong focus on continuous and long-term value creation across all participants of our flywheel
• Collaborate with management and stakeholders to define strategic roadmaps and translate them into actionable quarterly plans.
• Drive execution and delivery of ML/AI solutions by managing priorities, deadlines, and deliverables, leveraging your technical expertise.
• Design and deliver scalable, secure systems using state-of-the-art AI/ML technologies and industry best practices, and nurture the culture of creating high-quality, well-tested systems to address critical product and business needs.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues to improve system reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency.
• Ensure the security, scalability, and architectural integrity of feature designs through reviews across teams.
• Deliver hands-on solutions while mentoring other data professionals (including MLEs) within the organization
• Explore and apply advanced machine learning techniques, including large language models (LLMs), deep learning, and graph neural networks, to solve complex challenges across the organization.
• Guide a team of MLEs across different areas:
• Mentoring: Mentor team members on design principles, coding standards, and the adoption of AI productivity tools.
• Recommendations – Personalize guidance across different surfaces using deep learning methods; personalize layouts with Bayesian contextual multi-armed bandits
• Growth: Foster long-term growth through data-driven causality and incrementality
• Gen-AI: Power existing applications with Gen AI models and engineering to improve downstream experience and decisions
• Lifecycle - Using ML models (such as XGBoost & Causal Meta-Learner-based model, etc), proactively guide business teams across different areas
• Engineering - With engineering partners, build ML and Gen-AI platform and inference pipelines for different types of models

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:

PhD in Computer Science, Stats, Economics, or a relevant technical field with at least 8+ years of relevant experience or MS with at least 10+ years of experience