Lead Sr. 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 100% remote role. May require onsite interviews]

About the Role

Join us in shaping the future of Automotive Commerce. At Cars Commerce, our Core Engineering Services (Leads 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 'leads platform' is the powerhouse behind the leads services in our business. We own the engine that captures, routes, and delivers leads across Cars Commerce—connecting ready-to-buy shoppers with dealerships at the exact moment they're ready to act. We're integrated with major CRM systems, processing leads in real-time, and scaling to handle the majority of lead delivery across the business.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you'll own critical pieces of this platform: designing APIs that business units depend on and ensuring every lead makes it from shoppers to dealerships without a hitch.Your services fuels our platform’s 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 Leads! 

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:

This opportunity enables you to...

• 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…

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience

• 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 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 Elixir are encouraged to apply

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

In the spirit of pay transparency, we are excited to share the base salary range for this position. In addition to base salary, some roles are eligible for our bonus and/or equity programs, depending on level and role. Regular full-time positions are eligible for our comprehensive benefits package. If you are hired at Cars Commerce, your final base salary compensation will be determined based on factors such as skills and/or experience. If the salary range is close to what you're seeking, then we encourage you to apply and learn more about the total compensation package for this position.

Salary Range

$135,300.00-169,150.00

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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