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 newCars 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 weRise 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 beOpen to All, encouraging open-minded communication because we know diverse thinking yields better outcomes. But critical to our success isCaring to ChallengeandTaking 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 ReportBest 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.

ABOUT THE ROLE [Remote, may require onsite interviews] -

Join us in shaping a future of Automotive Commerce. Cars Commerce builds solutions for automotive dealerships, manufacturers, and consumers. Our driving force is to deliver a single platform that simplifies everything about buying and selling cars. Our Websites Engineering Team drives our Dealer Inspire platform. We are embarking on a transformational journey, building innovative and integrated services that redefine how we deliver value to our customers.

Cars Commerce is unifying the car-buying journey on a single, data-driven platform, and Core Services supplies the identity, inventory, lead-delivery and data-streaming capabilities on which every brand in our portfolio relies. As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll be a part of a team that owns several high-throughput, API-first services and an end-user web application that serves our dealer customers

As a Senior Software Engineer on our Websites Engineering Team, you will help revitalize our customer-facing tooling across our platform with a comprehensive technical strategy to simplify and amplify these user experiences and the capabilities they enable. This is an exceptional opportunity to shape the future of our platform and drive meaningful change at scale, making a lasting impact within the automotive industry.

ABOUT YOU -

As a Senior Software Engineer, you are a part of our newly formed team responsible for the "heartbeat" of our digital experience. The Consumer Engagement team has been tasked with building a real-time interaction layer between car buyers and dealerships, processing millions of signals to create personalized, frictionless journeys, generating actionable leads for our customers

You are an experienced, results-driven 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 Observability, Performance, Security, Scalability and Maintainability. You understand software architecture and engineering best practices and are comfortable making technical decisions that balance speed, quality, and long-term stability.

You are also adept at using architecture patterns and iterative approaches to improve legacy services. You’re comfortable with both hands-on coding and designing backend services that meet evolving product requirements. You understand the importance of testing, observability, and CI/CD pipelines in delivering reliable systems. You have experience working with Kubernetes and containerized services, leveraging orchestration and automation to optimize deployment, scalability, and resilience.

WHY YOU'LL BE EXCITED ABOUT THIS ROLE

This opportunity enables you to...

• Develop Scalable and Observable Systems: Collaborate with a lead engineer to design and develop high-performance, API-based backend services that meet service level objectives (SLOs) and scale to support growing business needs.

• Own Production Systems: Own the health and uptime of business-critical systems you and your team builds. Participate in on-call rotations to quickly resolve incidents and conduct postmortems to drive continuous improvement in system reliability.

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with product managers, engineering teams, and infrastructure teams to define technical requirements and design scalable, maintainable systems 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 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

• 5+ 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

• Experience with PHP and web frameworks like Symfony or Laravel

• Experience in the node ecosystem and frameworks including Express, NextJS and other API frameworks

• Proven track record of successfully delivering high-quality software

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

• 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, with the ability to select the appropriate design pattern for different use cases and requirements

• Solid understanding of PostgreSQL and MySQL, caching strategies, and messaging systems, ideally 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

• Familiarity with DevSecOps practices, including implementing CI/CD pipelines (e.g Github Actions), automated testing, and integrating security throughout the development lifecycle

• Familiarity with end to end testing frameworks such as Cypress or Playwright

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

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience transitioning legacy "monolith" retail tools into a modern, event-driven architecture.

• Background in automotive digital retailing or high-volume e-commerce.

• Strong opinions on API design and contract-first development.

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.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Applicants: Click here to review our Privacy Policy for Applicants. For current employees, please click here to review our California Privacy Policy for Employees.