Sr. Manager, Software Engineering

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.

Senior Engineering Manager - Transactional Platform

Lead autonomous engineering teams building high-throughput, API-first services that power payments, credit applications, and incentives management across Cars Commerce's unified car-buying platform. You'll partner with Product leadership to translate business goals into measurable roadmaps, champion engineering excellence, and serve as incident commander for production reliability. Beyond managing teams, you'll influence platform architecture and drive cross-domain integrations that unlock new revenue streams.

We're seeking an empathetic, outcomes-oriented leader with 10+ years in software engineering and 5+ years leading teams. You should have strong experience with cloud-native architectures (AWS, Kubernetes), API-driven systems, and scaling backend services. Most importantly, you foster psychological safety, use data to drive decisions, and believe great ideas can come from anywhere. Don't worry if your tech stack or automotive experience isn't a perfect match—curiosity, action orientation, and inclusive leadership matter more than checking every box.

About the Role

Cars Commerce is unifying the car-buying journey on a single, data-driven platform, and Transactional Platform supplies systems like payments, credit applications, incentives management, and other capabilities that enable transactional functionality across every brand in our portfolio. As a Senior Engineering Manager, you’ll guide autonomous teams that own several high-throughput, API-first services built in PHP / Node.js and deployed on AWS EKS / ECS. You’ll work shoulder-to-shoulder with Product leadership to turn six- to twelve-month business goals into an incremental, measurable roadmap; champion sound engineering practices around observability, security and on-call health; and serve as incident commander and steward of production reliability for your domain. Beyond your immediate teams, you’ll influence platform architecture, shape cross-domain integrations that unlock new revenue streams, and help set the technical direction for the wider organization.

About You

You’re an empathetic, outcomes-oriented leader who balances people, process and product. Perhaps you’ve shipped or overseen services handling thousands of requests per second, mentored senior engineers and first-time managers, or negotiated scope changes without losing sight of customer value—but you still see yourself as a lifelong learner who uses data rather than dogma to improve. You foster psychological safety, celebrate diverse viewpoints and believe that the best ideas can come from anywhere. Even if your technology experience doesn't perfectly match our stack or automotive retail isn’t already on your résumé, your curiosity, bias for action and commitment to inclusive leadership matter more than a perfect skills match—so if the mission excites you, we encourage you to apply. 

Responsibilities

• Lead multi-team delivery: Direct one or more teams that own several high-throughput, API-first services; set clear objectives, groom at least one full increment of backlog, and hold the bar on Jira hygiene and velocity transparency.

• Drive product road-mapping & prioritization: Partner with Product Managers to translate six- to twelve-month business goals into incremental, measurable milestones; balance new feature work with technical debt and platform investments.

• Coach, develop, and scale talent: Provide frequent 1-1s, actionable feedback, and growth plans for senior engineers and leads; mentor emerging managers as the org expands; champion an inclusive culture of psychological safety and continuous learning.

• Steward production reliability & security: Own SLOs, on-call rotations, incident command, and post-mortem learning; ensure adherence to security and compliance maintenance guidelines and vulnerability-remediation SLAs.

• Operational excellence through metrics: Monitor DORA, change-failure rate, incident MTTR, and CapEx accuracy; initiate improvement plans when trends deviate from targets.

• Architectural guidance & modernization: Review designs for extensibility, backwards compatibility, and cost efficiency; promote modern practices in CI/CD, observability, and DevSecOps across all owned systems.

• Cross-functional influence: Coordinate integrations with adjacent domains (Inventory, Leads, Data Engineering), negotiate timelines and API contracts, and represent Transactional Platform in company-wide program reviews.

• Hiring & org shaping: Partner with Talent Acquisition to build a diverse pipeline, run structured interviews aligned to this guide, and make evidence-based hiring decisions; forecast head-count needs as product scope grows.

Qualifications

• Experience: 10+ years in software engineering with 5+ years leading engineers, including managing multiple teams and/or first-line managers; proven track record shipping and operating business-critical backend services at scale.

• Technical depth: Strong background in cloud-native architectures (AWS, Docker, Kubernetes/EKS, ECS), event-driven and API-driven systems; comfortable reviewing designs for scalability, resilience, and cost.

• Delivery mastery: Demonstrated ability to plan increments, forecast capacity, and use Jira, DORA, and DX metrics to drive predictable outcomes and continuous improvement.

• Leadership & people development: Skilled at coaching senior/staff engineers, giving constructive feedback, resolving conflict, and fostering an inclusive, high-trust culture aligned with company values.

• Product partnership: Comfortable co-authoring OKRs, making scope/risk trade-offs, and communicating decisions to executives and cross-functional stakeholders.

• Security & reliability mindset: Familiar with incident management best practices, observability stacks (DataDog), vulnerability remediation, and DevSecOps pipelines.

• Communication excellence: Able to tailor technical and non-technical narratives to engineers, product managers, and executives alike; proven record of influencing beyond direct authority.

• Bonus points: Experience with PHP/Laravel or Node.js, automotive-retail data pipelines, or leading platform modernization initiatives.

Salary Range

$149,800.00-187,250.00

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!

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