Sr. Software Engineer

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 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. We are proud to be named one of Built In's 2026 Best Places to Work in Chicago and across the U.S. Ready to make your mark? Join a team that's driving real change in the automotive industry.

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.

• Bachelor’s degree or above 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 in the Node JS ecosystem and frameworks including NestJS

• Experience with React JS and TypeScript

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

• Experience at scale and solid understanding of PostgreSQL and MySQL, caching strategies with Redis, and messaging systems like Kafka

• Experience with unit (Jest, phpunit), integration, and end to end testing frameworks such as Cypress or Playwright

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

• Experience with AI tools to improve code quality, speed etc

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

• Proven experience designing and implementing observability solutions to ensure system reliability, performance, and uptime in production

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

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

• Proven track record of successfully delivering high-quality software

• Experience with PHP and WordPress