Principal Data Scientist

When you join Sallie, you become a champion for all students.

Sallie's Education Services team is a diverse group of growth-obsessed entrepreneurs, data analysts, engineers, and developers with a passion for imagining and building scalable businesses for students and families on their unique journey to-through and immediately after higher education. We're on a mission to revolutionize how students and their families plan, pay and complete this journey with confidence. Join a team of seekers, challengers and creative thinkers to change the way students plan for their future for the better.

What You'll Contribute

The Senior Principal Engineer will be responsible for shaping long-term engineering direction and serve as a key technical advisor to engineering and product leadership.

What You'll Do

• Define and evolve company-wide architectural standards.
• Lead the design of systems that span multiple products or platforms, ensuring technical cohesion and scalability.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and executive leadership to align technical strategy with business objectives.
• Identify long-term technical risks and opportunities.
• Provide guidance across multiple technical domains and teams, driving decision-making and cross-functional coordination.
• Drive execution of complex, high-risk technical initiatives with ambiguous scope or competing priorities.

The above information is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by employees assigned to this job; it is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees in this role.

What You Have

Minimum education, skills and experience required.

• Proven ability to drive architectural decisions across multiple teams or business units.
• Deep expertise in designing large-scale systems, services, or platforms.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong sense of ownership, initiative, and the ability to thrive in fast-paced, high-impact environments.

Preferred education, skills, and experience.

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with a consistent record of technical leadership at scale.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Advanced technical degree is a plus.

The Americans with Disabilities Act

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibits discrimination by employers, in compensation and employment opportunities, against qualified individuals with disabilities who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the "essential functions" of a job. A function may be essential for any of several reasons, including: the job exists to perform that function, the employee holding the job was hired for his/her expertise in performing the function, or only a limited number of employees are available to perform that function.

Feeling your best helps you do your best:

Our benefits take care of the whole you-so you can build your work around your life (not the other way around!).

• Competitive base salaries
• Bonus incentives
• Generous PTO, Floating Holidays and 12 Federal Holidays observed
• Support for financial-well-being and retirement 401k with employer match
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, hospital indemnity, critical illness, pet insurance and more
• Employer paid short-term/long-term disability and basic life insurance
• Flexible hybrid working arrangements.
• Paid parental leave and adoption reimbursement programs
• Free access to on-site staffed fitness centers (in Delaware) and gym subsidy (for locations outside Delaware)
• Confidential counseling support (EAP), Health Advocacy services and Wellness program with financial incentives
• Tuition Reimbursement and Family Scholarship Programs
• Career development and training opportunities

Not the right fit? Let us know you're interested in a future opportunity by clicking Introduce Yourself in the top-right corner of the page or create an account to set up email alerts as new job postings become available that meet your interest!

Sallie Mae is proud to be an equal opportunity (EEO) employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, genetic information, gender identity, disability, Veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. Click here to view the U.S. Pay Transparency Policy, here for federal job applicant notices, and here to view the California Employee Privacy Notice.

Reasonable accommodations are available for applicants with disabilities in all phases of the application and employment process. To request an accommodation please call and choose option 9. All information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodations.