Software Engineer - Elixir

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 remote role that may require onsite interviews]

About the Role

Join us in shaping the future of Automotive Commerce. At Cars Commerce, our Core Engineering Services - (Inventory) 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 Inventory Platform is the powerhouse behind the data in our business. We own the critical data services that process, normalize, and distribute vehicle data, the digital foundation that enables every part of the Cars Commerce ecosystem. This work enables dealerships and OEMs with innovative technical solutions and data-driven intelligence to better reach and influence ready-to-buy shoppers.

As a Software Engineer on our team, you’ll be a  high-impact contributor, building and scaling high-throughput, API-first services using Elixir and deploying to AWS EKS using Terraform. Your services fuel our most critical platform 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 senior engineers and Product leadership to translate bold business goals into reliable, incremental outcomes. You will engage in 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 feature development, and contribute significantly to our architectural direction.

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

About You 

In this role, you will be a key contributor, raising development standards and collaborating closely with your team to deliver high-value systems for automotive consumers and customers. You thrive on quality and accountability.

You have direct experience in web application and API development, including hands-on work with Amazon Web Services (AWS). You have a proven track record of contributing clean, well tested code to production applications and fluently use developer tools for building, testing, and deployment.

You are a reliable, self-directed contributor who consistently completes designated tasks on time and to specification. You are driven by a strong desire to learn, an innate curiosity, and a passion for growing your career by gaining new technical knowledge.

This role is positioned within our Core Services Engineering (Inventory) Team and works closely with our various Platform Engineering teams to collaborate on new projects, operate and maintain the existing Inventory platform, and look ahead to what is in our Engineering roadmap.

Responsibilities

• Develop Scalable and Observable Systems: Work with a lead or senior engineer to implement and build high-performance, API-based backend services that meet performance and availability goals.

• Support Production Systems: Help maintain the health and uptime of business-critical systems. Participate in on-call rotations to help resolve incidents and assist with postmortems to improve system reliability.

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with product managers, engineering teams, and infrastructure teams to understand requirements and contribute to the design of maintainable systems that align with business goals.

• Contribute to DevSecOps Practices: Help to implement and maintain continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, automated testing, and security practices to ensure the reliability and security of production systems.

• Document and Share Knowledge: Contribute to the documentation of API designs, system architectures, and operational procedures to help internal teams and external customers easily understand and use the APIs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience

• 2 to 5 plus years of Elixir experience in backend development with a focus on building and operating systems, including microservices architectures, APIs, and event-driven systems

• Experience delivering high-quality software in a fast-paced Agile environment

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

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

• Experience building RESTful APIs and authoring API documentation

• Experience using PostgreSQL or other relational databases

• Familiarity with implementing observability solutions (e.g., in DataDog) to ensure system reliability and performance

• Familiarity with DevSecOps practices, including CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Github Actions) and automated testing

• Willingness to participate in an on-call rotation to support production systems

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

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. 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.