Software Engineer - PHP

Cars Commerce • IL

65d • $104,100 - $130,150

About The Position

Join us in shaping the future of Automotive Commerce. Our Transactional Platform Team is on a transformative journey, building innovative services that will redefine the way we deliver value as Cars Commerce is unifying the car-buying journey on a single, data-driven platform. Our Transactional Platform is the powerhouse behind the systems that keep our brands running — from payments and credit applications to incentives management and other key capabilities that enable seamless transactions across our entire portfolio. That includes industry-leading names like Cars.com, Dealer Inspire, AccuTrade, and our Media Network. As a Software Engineer on our Incentives/Credit team, you’ll be part of an autonomous, high-impact group that builds and scales high-throughput, API-first services using Node.js and PHP, deployed on AWS EKS/ECS. These services fuel our most critical financial systems — powering everything from CreditIQ (our credit application platform) to our incentives management tools, which collectively support millions of car-buying transactions each year. This is an incredible opportunity to make a real impact. You’ll collaborate closely with Product leadership to turn bold business goals into measurable, incremental outcomes. You’ll drive best-in-class engineering practices around observability, security, and reliability, ensuring your services perform flawlessly in production. As you grow in the role, you’ll have the chance to shape platform architecture, lead cross-domain integrations that open new revenue streams, and influence the future technical direction of the Transactional Platform. Join us and build the technology that’s redefining how the automotive industry transacts!

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
• 2 to 5+ years of PHP experience in development of web services and APIs.
• Strong experience building backend services with Node.js and JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience with Node.js frameworks for API development (Express, Fastify, NestJS, or similar).
• Experience building RESTful APIs and understanding of API design principles.
• Experience with SQL and demonstrated proficiency in database design fundamentals.
• Proven track record of successfully delivering high-quality software.
• Strong collaboration, communication and interpersonal skills.
• Understanding of secure software development practices.
• Solid understanding of build processes and test automation.
• Willingness to participate in an on-call rotation.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with PHP and web frameworks like Laravel or Symfony.
• Experience with financial services, e-commerce, or high-transaction systems.
• Familiarity with containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with event-driven architectures and message queuing systems.
• Knowledge of modern API patterns and RESTful best practices.
• Experience with Node.js testing frameworks (Jest, Mocha, etc.).
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code.
• Understanding of platform architecture and service-oriented design.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Understanding of Agile methodologies and concepts.

Responsibilities

• Develop high-performance services that meet service level objectives (SLOs) and scale to support growing business needs.
• Own the quality and maintenance of business-critical systems built by the team.
• Participate in on-call rotations to quickly resolve incidents and conduct postmortems to drive continuous improvement in system reliability.
• Collaborate with product managers, engineering teams, and infrastructure teams to fulfill technical requirements.
• Ensure comprehensive documentation of API designs, system architectures, and operational procedures.

Benefits

• 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees