Lead Platform Engineer
About The Position
Cox Automotive is seeking a Lead Platform Engineer to help build and operate DriveQ, a next-generation federated GraphQL platform that unifies enterprise data domains and powers internal and external products. The role focuses on scaling Apollo Federation infrastructure, enabling multi-tenant routing, and supporting capabilities such as contracts, billing, analytics, Snowflake-based transformations, self-service workflows, and containerized execution models. The Lead Software Engineer provides technical ownership and design leadership for this evolving platform. The role guides complex design decisions, promotes engineering standards and consistency, mentors engineers, and coordinates across teams. It also supports emerging capabilities such as AI-driven data quality, lineage, and impact analysis, while helping data science and analytics teams build scalable, reliable solutions aligned with enterprise standards. This is a hybrid role with the ability to work remotely part of the week. The work shift is day, and travel is not required. Rotational on-call duties outside standard business hours may be required. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States for any employer without current or future sponsorship; OPT, CPT, STEM/OPT, and visa sponsorship are not available. Employment requires clearing a pre-employment drug test.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline and 6 years of experience in a related field; alternatively, a master’s degree and 4 years of experience, a Ph.D. and 1 year of experience, or 18 years of experience in a related field.
- Experience building distributed systems and APIs at scale.
- Proficiency in TypeScript, Java, or Python.
- Hands-on experience with cloud-native infrastructure, including AWS, ECS/Kubernetes, DNS routing, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Strong understanding of API design principles and governance.
- Currently authorized to work in the United States for any employer without current or future sponsorship.
- Availability for rotational on-call duties outside standard business hours may be required.
- Ability to clear a pre-employment drug test.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with GraphQL and Apollo Federation.
- Familiarity with API gateway or routing layers such as Kong, routers, or load balancing.
- Experience with observability, telemetry, and data pipelines such as S3 and Snowflake.
- Exposure to multi-region architecture and high-availability systems.
- Experience working on platform teams or shared infrastructure.
- Experience with Apollo Server, Strawberry, or similar frameworks.
Responsibilities
- Design and develop federated GraphQL (Apollo) architecture, including schema design, subgraph integration, and supergraph evolution.
- Build and scale Apollo router infrastructure for multi-region deployments, routing, and failover.
- Implement CI/CD pipelines and governance workflows to support safe schema evolution and prevent breaking API changes.
- Develop multi-tenant routing and Apollo contracts for external and internal product use cases.
- Contribute to platform initiatives including usage telemetry, billing data capture, and Snowflake integration.
- Partner with data, platform, and product teams to onboard subgraphs and improve discoverability.
- Lead technical design discussions and mentor junior engineers.
- Guide complex design decisions, enforce engineering standards, and ensure consistency across solutions.
- Coordinate cross-team design for capabilities such as AI-driven data quality, lineage, and impact analysis.
Benefits
- Flexible paid vacation, subject to duties and company needs.
- Seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year.
- Up to 160 hours of paid wellness time annually for the employee or family members.
- Bereavement leave.
- Time off to vote.
- Jury duty leave.
- Volunteer time off.
- Military leave.
- Parental leave.
- Potential access to medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- Potential access to 401(k) retirement planning.
- Potential access to sick leave and flexible vacation/wellness days or PTO.
- Potential eligibility for an incentive program.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
