Lead Software Engineer

Be essential at Cars Commerce

At Cars Commerce, we’re fanatical about simplifying everything about car buying and selling. We do right by our customers and consumers to better connect the industry with simplified and tierless technology to enhance, measure and drive local automotive retail. Whether through our No.1 most recognized marketplace, Cars.com, our industry-leading digital experience, Dealer Inspire, our trade and appraisal technology, AccuTrade, our reputation-based digital wholesale auction marketplace, Dealerclub, or our new Cars Commerce Media Network, Cars Commerce is essential for success in the automotive industry.

No one ever travels alone here: at its core, Cars Commerce is collaboration. In fact, it’s built into the very fabric of our shared values. We like to say we Rise Together – putting people at the center of what we do, from consumer to customer to community. Life at Cars Commerce makes it easy when we share the ethos to be Open to All, encouraging open-minded communication because we know diverse thinking yields better outcomes. But critical to our success is Caring to Challengeand Taking Ownership, fueling a competitive spirit in a respectful environment where we think about tomorrow but act today. At our foundation, we have integrity, Doing the Right Thing, even when it’s hard. It’s our shared commitment to these values that makes Cars Commerce a place where growth becomes not only possible, but downright unavoidable.

But don’t take our word for it. As a U.S. News & World Report Best Company to Work For in 2024, we're obsessive about the employee experience. We are among the top 20% being declared “Best” of our industry based on six critical factors that are important to employee wellbeing, like quality of pay, benefits, work life balance and more.

[This is a remote role that may require onsite interviews]

About the Role

Join us in shaping the future of Automotive Commerce. At Cars Commerce, our Core Engineering Services - (Inventory) Team is on a mission to deliver one platform that simplifies everything about buying and selling cars, unifying the car-buying journey on a single, data-driven platform.

Our Inventory Platform is the powerhouse behind the data in our business. We own the critical data services that process, normalize, and distribute vehicle data, the digital foundation that enables every part of the Cars Commerce ecosystem. This work enables dealerships and OEMs with innovative technical solutions and data-driven intelligence to better reach and influence ready-to-buy shoppers.

As a Lead Software Engineer on our team, you’ll be an autonomous and high-impact contributor, building and scaling high-throughput, API-first services and deploying to AWS EKS using Terraform. Your services fuel our most critical platform capabilities, directly supporting the growth and tighter integration of our existing brands like New Cars, Used Cars, Car Dealers, Prices & Reviews | Cars.com , Dealer Inspire, and AccuTrade, which collectively support millions of users each month..

This is an incredible opportunity to make a direct impact. You’ll collaborate closely with Engineering and Product leadership to translate bold business goals into reliable, incremental outcomes. You will drive best-in-class engineering practices around scalability, observability, security, and reliability in your daily work. As you grow in the role, you’ll have the chance to deepen your technical expertise, own larger features and systems development, and contribute significantly to our architectural direction.

Join us and build the core capabilities that are redefining how the automotive industry shares data! 

About You

You are an experienced, results-driven Lead Software Engineer who thrives in building scalable and reliable backend systems. You have a strong foundation in designing and developing API-based services that can handle high traffic volumes while ensuring performance, security, and maintainability. You deeply understand software architecture and engineering best practices and are comfortable making strategic technical decisions that balance immediate speed and quality with long-term architectural runway and stability.

 You’re comfortable with both hands-on coding and providing technical direction on building backend services that meet evolving product requirements. You understand the importance of testing, observability, and CI/CD pipelines in delivering reliable systems.

 You are a systems thinker who can see commonalities and connections across multiple use cases and design solutions that can be utilized internally and externally. Above all, you’re passionate about creating core capabilities and services that empower product teams to innovate quickly and reliably.

Why You'll Be Excited About This Role:

• Design and Develop Strategic, Scalable Systems: Lead the architecture, design, and development of high-performance, API-based backend services, making strategic, forward-looking architectural decisions that meet service level objectives (SLOs) and scale to support long-term, growing business needs.

• Define Technical Strategy: Analyze current state, anticipate future technical challenges, and help define the technical roadmap for your domain, ensuring architectural choices are scalable, sustainable, and align with the broader company vision.

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with product managers, engineering teams, and infrastructure teams to define technical requirements and design scalable, maintainable system architectures that align with business goals and product roadmaps.

• Implement DevSecOps Practices: Champion and implement continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, automated testing, and security practices throughout the development lifecycle to ensure the reliability, observability and security of production systems.

• Drive Documentation and Knowledge Sharing: Ensure comprehensive documentation of API designs, system architectures, and operational procedures to enable internal teams and external customers to easily build and integrate with the APIs in a self-service manner.

We’re Excited About You Because…

• You have Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience

• You have 8+ years of experience in backend development with a strong focus on designing, building, and operating large-scale and highly available systems, including microservices architectures, APIs, and event-driven systems

• You have proven track record of successfully delivering high-quality software in a fast-paced Agile environment

• You have strong collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across cross-functional teams and adapt to changing requirements

• You have extensive hands-on experience with AWS and containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, including deploying, monitoring, and scaling applications in production

• You have in-depth experience with RESTful APIs, GraphQL, and gRPC, with the ability to select the appropriate design pattern for different use cases and requirements

• You have solid understanding of relational and NoSQL databases, caching strategies, and messaging systems, with hands-on experience in implementing these technologies at scale

• You have proven experience designing and implementing observability solutions (e.g., DataDog) to ensure system reliability, performance, and uptime in production

• You have a solid understanding of security principles, including data encryption, access control, and secure API design

• You have familiarity with DevSecOps practices, including implementing CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and integrating security throughout the development lifecycle

• You have excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences

• You have the willingness to participate in an on-call rotation, providing prompt incident resolution and conducting postmortems to improve system reliability

Bonus : 

Experience with Elixir and Phoenix framework is a plus. Candidates without Elixir experience but with a strong background in distributed systems, services, APIs, and backend development who are willing to learn new technologies are encouraged to apply.

Join us and build the core capabilities that are redefining how the automotive industry shares data! 

Our Comprehensive Benefits Package includes:

• Medical, Dental & Vision Healthcare Plans

• New Hire Stipend for Home Office Set-Up

• Generous PTO

• Refuel - a service based recognition program where employees receive additional paid time away to learn grow and reset

• Paid Holidays, Floating Holiday, Volunteer Day, Recharge Day

Learn more about our Benefits, Perks, & Culture on our LinkedIn Life Pages!

For US-based Positions: Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. Please note that we are unable to sponsor employment visas at this time.
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