Python Engineer

About Carvana

“We believe CVNA is in the early stages of becoming the next U.S. retail category killer.” 

– Stephens Investment Bank, Analyst Report, Sept. 2024

Building leading-edge technology has been at the core of Carvana’s strategy since our founding, driving us to become the 3rd fastest company in history to organically reach the Fortune 500 following only Amazon and Google. Today, we remain founder-lead and as ambitious as ever. In 2024, we have not only emerged as the fastest growing automotive retailer, but also the most profitable thanks to our deep vertical integration across retail, lending, vehicle transportation, wholesale auctions, and more. 

If you want to grow not just as an Engineer but as a leader and business-builder, Carvana is the place for you. Our technology teams build: 

• End-to-end ecommerce for both selling and buying cars, including everything you see on Carvana.com and in our mobile apps.
• AI-driven customer support across chat, email, SMS, and voice, as well as a proprietary CRM platform to ensure the most efficient and highest quality customer experience.
• 360° vehicle photography and interactive merchandising using cutting edge computer vision and AI techniques.
• The most sophisticated and self-service automotive lending platform in the world.
• Systems and tools behind a nationwide logistics network that has delivered and picked up over 3 million cars via our fully owned and operated fleet of automotive haulers, efficiently managing distribution of our massive inventory to 85% of US driveways.
• Enterprise grade systems for operating the largest vehicle reconditioning facilities in the US, with workflow and automation to guide the work for everything mechanical, electrical, and cosmetic needed to bring each car to our high standards.
• Early adoption and customization of AI tools for optimizing our Developer efficiency and experience.

And much, much more…

THIS IS A 100% ON-SITE POSITION FROM OUR HQ IN TEMPE (Monday through Friday)

JOB DESCRIPTION...

As a Software Engineer on our Next Generation Communications Platform (NGCP) team, you’ll design and build microservices that integrate cutting-edge LLMs and AI models, and support ML pipelines for continuous improvement of our AI capabilities. The NGCP team is a passionate and collaborative group of experts in Product, Design, Data Science, and Engineering who are redefining customer experience at Carvana. At the heart of our work is a cutting-edge communication platform that empowers car buyers and sellers to enjoy an effortless car shopping experience every day. We build our systems from the ground up with a relentless focus on the end-consumer, and we’re looking for someone who shares our vision to join our team.

As a key member of the NGCP team, you’ll play an integral role in shaping Sebastian, our interactive chat-bot system, where you’ll work with cutting edge generative AI models in order to provide best-in-class customer service for all our customers. You’ll also contribute to our overarching data and AI strategy, enhancing a suite of ML-driven services that support our customers and advocates. Collaborating closely with our Product, Data Science, and Software Engineering teams, you’ll help transform every stage of the purchase process—from search right through to vehicle delivery.

Responsibilities 

• Enhance our NGCP platform by developing APIs and infrastructure that connect Sebastian, our AI chat bot, to communication channels like SMS, chat, voice, email, messaging services and the web
• Creating systems, APIs, and tooling for enabling end-to-end dialogs between our AI and customers to improve the communication experience
• Leverage the latest foundational models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and LLM frameworks to improve customers’ experiences. 
• Work with the Data Science team to build out services for training, monitoring and enhancing machine learning models’ accuracy

Help drive forward our MLOps framework to streamline model development, deployment and monitoring.

• Full software development lifecycle from design and development to testing and operating in production
• Communicate effectively with engineers, product managers and data scientists

Required Skills and Experience 

• Experience with Python, SQL
• Experience with cloud APIs (e.g., GCP, AWS, Azure)
• Experience using generative AI models like GPT-4/GPT-4o, Claude, others
• Strong foundation in algorithms and data structures and their real-world use cases
• Understanding of computer systems and networks
• Production quality coding standards and patterns

Bonus Skill (helpful but not required)

• Kubernetes and Docker
• Experience with Copilot, Cline or other developer AI assistants
• Experience with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch
• MLOps tools (Mlflow, Kubeflow)

What we’ll offer in return

• Full-Time Salary Position with a competitive salary.
• Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits.
• 401K with company match.
• A multitude of perks including student loan payments, discounts on vehicles, benefits for your pets, and much more.
• A great wellness program to keep you healthy and happy both physically and mentally.
• Access to opportunities to expand your skill set and share your knowledge with others across the organization.
• A company culture of promotions from within, with a start-up atmosphere allowing for varied and rapid career development.

Legal Stuff...

Hiring is contingent on passing a complete background check. This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

Carvana is an equal employment opportunity employer. All applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, national origin, age, mental or physical disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law. Carvana also prohibits harassment of applicants or employees based on any of these protected categories.

Please note this job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.