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About the Role

Cars Commerce is seeking a Backend Staff Engineer to modernize platform services and tooling. This role involves designing and developing scalable, performance-optimized backend systems for the Dealer Inspire platform, contributing to a transformational journey in automotive commerce technology.

Responsibilities

Design and develop components and performance-optimized back-end systems that scale across Dealer Inspire.
Lead Backend Architecture: Define and drive reusable, reliable, and scalable back-end architectures across the Cars Commerce platform and integrations.
Lead the design, work breakdown, and development of high-performance, API-based backend services that meet service-level objectives (SLOs) and scale with growing business demands.
Champion technical excellence by promoting best practices in system design, operational maturity, and engineering quality across the team.
Work closely with engineering, design, and product partners across teams to align on back-end strategies and standards, elevate the use of back-end, API and integration consistency, and reduce duplication.
Serve as a back-end thought leader and mentor, coaching other engineers and shaping team/department-wide best practices.
Treat components and libraries as products. Develop excellent documentation, innovative usage patterns, and internal developer experience.
Collaborate with backend developers to integrate UIs with APIs.
Participate in an on-call rotation, providing prompt incident resolution and conducting postmortems to improve system reliability.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.
10+ years of experience in backend software development with a strong focus on designing, building, and operating large-scale and highly available systems, including microservices architectures, APIs, and event-driven systems.
3+ years of experience architecting and building cloud-native solutions on AWS, leveraging services such as EKS, RDS, MSK, S3, and Lambda, including deploying, monitoring, and scaling applications in production environments.
Strong system design skills with the ability to evaluate trade-offs, drive consensus, and document design decisions effectively.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Proven experience mentoring engineers and supporting their growth in technical depth, architecture, and leadership.
Experience modernizing legacy systems and upgrading legacy technology stacks.
Strong experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs, GraphQL, and gRPC, with the ability to select the most appropriate interface for given technical and business requirements.
In-depth knowledge of relational (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (e.g., DynamoDB, MongoDB) data stores, caching strategies (e.g., Redis), and messaging systems (e.g., Kafka), with demonstrated experience implementing these at scale.
Proven experience building observability into systems using tools like DataDog or OpenTelemetry to ensure performance, reliability, and uptime.
Understanding of modern application security principles, including secure API design, data encryption, authentication/authorization (OAuth2, JWT), and role-based access control.
Familiarity with DevSecOps practices, including CI/CD pipeline implementation, automated testing, infrastructure as code, and security integration throughout the software development lifecycle.
Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. We are unable to sponsor employment visas at this time.

Skills

Backend development
Platform modernization
Scalable systems design
API integrations
Cloud-native solutions on AWS (EKS, RDS, MSK, S3, Lambda)
Node ecosystem (preferred)
Distributed systems
Microservices architectures
Event-driven systems
RESTful APIs
GraphQL
gRPC
Relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL)
NoSQL databases (DynamoDB, MongoDB)
Caching strategies (Redis)
Messaging systems (Kafka)
Observability (DataDog, OpenTelemetry)
Application security principles
DevSecOps practices
CI/CD pipeline implementation
Automated testing
Infrastructure as code

Location

Remote
Chicago area (for onsite interviews)

Work Type

Remote
Full-time

Experience Level

Staff Engineer
10+ years of experience in backend software development
3+ years of experience architecting and building cloud-native solutions on AWS

Education Level

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience

Salary/Compensations

$154,200.00 - $192,750.00

Benefits

Medical, Dental & Vision Healthcare Plans
New Hire Stipend for Home Office Set-Up
Generous PTO
Paid Holidays
Floating Holiday
Volunteer Day
Recharge Day

About the Company

Cars Commerce is fanatical about simplifying everything about car buying and selling, connecting the industry with simplified and tierless technology.
We operate the No.1 most recognized marketplace, Cars.com, industry-leading digital experience, Dealer Inspire, trade and appraisal technology, AccuTrade, reputation-based digital wholesale auction marketplace, Dealerclub, and the Cars Commerce Media Network.
Our core values are collaboration, Open to All, Caring to Challenge, Taking Ownership, and Doing the Right Thing.
We are proud to be named one of Built In's 2026 Best Places to Work in Chicago and across the U.S.

Equal Opportunity

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.