Principal Software Engineer - Data Architecture

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 [100% remote. May require onsite interviews]

Join us in shaping the future of Automotive Commerce. Our Enterprise Architecture Team is on a transformative journey, building innovative services that will redefine the way we deliver value. As a Principal Software Engineer you will lead the Data Architecture domain at Cars Commerce. An exceptional opportunity to influence the future of our platforms and drive meaningful change at scale to make an impact on the industry

Our Modern Data Driven Products are at the core of the Cars Commerce Platform and critical to our success. We enable customers, consumers, and internal stakeholders to use data to fulfill their goals.  From car shoppers finding the right car and seller, to partners garnering insights into their inventory and selling patterns to improve profits, our data is key.  We acquire, transform, store, analyze, and produce the data that enable our products and business owners to turn information into insights and outcomes. 

As a Principal Software Engineer responsible for our Enterprise Data Architecture, you will be a leader in shaping our data ecosystem. Your leadership and cross-company collaborations are essential to enabling the full potential of our data.  Data as a service is part of our product development philosophy, enabling asynchronous and realtime AI/ML based features. Additionally, you’ll be key in helping evolve our business strategy and tactics for data-driven analysis and decision making.  You will be a technical driver facilitating continuous progress across diverse teams within Technology, Product, Analytics, Marketing, Sales, and Finance.

This role is part of a high performing team that is visible and present across the company.  This role is a unique opportunity to architect the next generation of our AI/ML enhanced data driven evolution and can make meaningful impacts starting day one. This role reports to the Sr. Director of Platform Engineering who oversees our centralized Architecture team and Core Services critical to all of our products.

Why You'll Be Excited About This Role:

This opportunity enables you to...

• Influence Data and Data Architecture across the enterprise

• Partner with Product and Analytics to develop plans and guide delivery of highly visible data platforms and services

• Collaborate with a wide variety of business partners and be a key representative of the Data & Business Systems organization

• Be a strategic voice in the evaluation and adoption of new technology within the core data tech stack

• Author processes and policies for effective data use and stewardship across the company

• Build a culture of technical collaboration and scalable, resilient systems.

• Design and develop the enterprise-wide conceptual data model for our car buying and selling domain

• Have agency to architect and develop our enterprise semantic layer and underlying ontologies, laying the foundation for enhanced data understanding and AI-driven applications.

• Define data models and data pipelines that are optimized for AI/ML use cases, ensuring data quality, feature engineering capabilities, and efficient model training and deployment

• Be hands-on delivering code alongside engineering teams for data instrumentation, data pipelines, and data warehousing
   

We’re Excited About You Because…

• You have 12+ years of combined technical experience across software development, data engineering, and systems development

• You have 8+ years of experience with data architecture and data modeling

• You have extensive  experience working in large scale (millions of monthly users) eco-systems supporting SaaS technologies on modern cloud providers (AWS preferred)

• You have a degree in an engineering or computer science field, or related discipline

• You possess deep expertise in the design of data architecture, development of data models, data pipelines, and semantic or business data layers, with a strong understanding of how they can be enabled for advanced analytics and AI/ML

• You’ve worked with product and engineering teams to design features with analytic outputs in mind by leveraging event tracking, clickstream, and profiling services to enhance customer experience

• You are proficient in modern programming languages e.g. Python and have excellent SQL skills

• You have experience with operational database such as Postgres or MySQL

• You are an expert in AWS managed services and data engineering tools, such as (RedShift, API-Gateway, Bedrock, SageMaker,  S3, MSK, Spark, EMR, Airflow)

• You have experience working with data in CRM tools such as Salesforce and PeopleSoft

• You have exceptional communication and relationship-building skills with the ability to convey complex technical concepts to a diverse audience and drive alignment across groups

• You have developed APIs

• You have experience building resilient and scalable software solutions with a deep understanding of performance optimization techniques across the stack

• You have been a technical leader in a 100% remote environment, influencing stakeholders across design, engineering, and technology, both within your own organization and across an enterprise

• You know your way around CI/CD practices with an emphasis on delivering secure high quality software

• You have a desire to question the status quo and promote innovative solutions to challenging problems

• You excel at establishing and documenting standards and best practices for teams of fellow engineers

• You get excited about modern monitoring tools (Cloudwatch, DataDog, etc) and establishing metrics, monitoring, alarms, and dashboards

• You don’t blink at managing change management practices, policies, and procedures

• You thrive working in an Agile software delivery ecosystem focused on incremental delivery  

• You have previous examples of your ability and willingness to manage ambiguity i.e., help shape solutions and prioritize deliverables to align with the Company’s vision

• You have a strong track record of delivering results and able to effectively prioritize and manage multiple competing priorities with various business stakeholders

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.