This role pays less than
62%
of similar roles. Most pay
$170,334–$241,609
— the shaded band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$185k
versus about
$206k
for comparable roles.
Based on 240 similar postings.
Employer
About Ally Financial
Ally Financial is a US-based digital financial services company offering online banking, auto financing, mortgage, and investment products. It is one of the largest all-digital banks in the United States.
Ally Financial currently has
12 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$110,000–$180,000
across 12 roles with salary data.
Director Lead - Systems Engineering will lead Site Reliability Engineering and Production Operations to ensure the stability, resilience, and availability of production applications and platforms supporting Automotive and Insurance business lines. This leader is responsible for defining and executing the strategy for production operations, managing incident and change risks, and driving the adoption of SRE practices such as SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, and automation-first engineering. The role involves building high-performing teams, overseeing 24x7 production environments, and implementing AIOps to reduce manual toil. Key technical competencies include infrastructure engineering, cloud platform transformation, observability, and CI/CD practices. The candidate will partner with cross-functional teams to embed reliability into the design and delivery process while managing vendor relationships and evolving traditional application sustainment into a modern, scalable SRE-led operating model for critical high-availability services.
Lead SRE strategy and production operations to ensure availability, resiliency, and performance of critical application platforms.
Manage incident, problem, and change risks while overseeing service restoration across the entire application portfolio.
Drive adoption of SRE practices including SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, and automation-first engineering approaches.
Define the target-state SRE operating model, including capacity planning, skill mix, and 24/7 coverage strategies.
Establish and monitor operational health metrics to identify systemic risks and reduce incident volume.
Provide executive leadership during major incidents, ensuring rapid coordination and clear communication for resolution.
Partner with engineering, product, and infrastructure teams to embed reliability into design and delivery processes.
Drive investments in automation, tooling, and AI-driven operations to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.
What we're looking for
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent.
9+ years of relevant experience.
10+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Production Operations, Infrastructure Engineering, or related technology operations disciplines (preferred).
7+ years of experience leading managers, engineers, or large technical operations teams in complex enterprise environments (preferred).
Strong development and engineering background (preferred).
Experience designing and scaling SRE or production operations organizations (preferred).
Experience operating in 24x7, high-availability production environments with direct involvement in incident response (preferred).
Advanced degree in a technical or business-related discipline; relevant certifications in cloud, IT service management, reliability engineering, or agile practices (preferred).
FRACAS
Root Cause Analysis
Reliability Analysis
Fault Tree Analysis
SQL
Business Objects
Data Mining
Electronic Systems
SATCOM
Communication Systems
Troubleshooting