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, 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 Challenge and 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.

About the Role

Cars Commerce builds solutions for automotive dealerships, manufacturers, and consumers. Our driving force is to deliver one platform to simplify everything about buying and selling cars.  Our platform enables dealerships and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with innovative technical solutions and data-driven intelligence to better reach and influence ready-to-buy shoppers, increase inventory turn, and gain market share. To support the growth and tighter integration of our existing brands like Cars.com, Dealer Inspire, and AccuTrade, we are seeking a Lead Senior Software Engineer to build scalable, secure, and reliable API-based backend services that enable the Cars Commerce platform. 

About You

You are an experienced, results-driven Elixir 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 technical decisions that balance speed, quality, and long-term 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.

Responsibilities

• Design and Develop Scalable and Observable Systems: Lead the architecture, design, and development of 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 build. 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 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 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.

Qualifications

• 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

• Experience with Elixir and Phoenix framework is a preferred . 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.

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!

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. California Applicants: Click here to review our California Privacy Policy for Applicants. For current employees, please click here to review our California Privacy Policy for Employees.