Lead Software Engineer

Cars Commerce

2d • Remote

About The Position

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!

Requirements

• 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

Nice To Haves

• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Benefits

• 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
• Medical, Dental & Vision Healthcare Plans

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level