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Staff Software Engineer at Cars Commerce, Chicago, IL

Staff Software Engineer at Cars Commerce in Chicago, IL. Full-time. $154,200 to $192,750 a year. Apply with swipeandhired.

Power confident decisions at Cars.com
Cars.com is the marketplace millions of people trust to buy and sell cars with confidence.

More than 25 years ago, we started as a simple idea, connect buyers and sellers, and today we do a lot more: trusted reviews, transparent pricing, and real-time, proprietary data that cut through the noise of one of life's biggest purchases. Our scaled marketplace, paired with interconnected technology, data, and media, gives dealers and OEMs everything they need to sell more cars.

At Cars.com, we debate openly, decide fast, and deliver what we say we will. We solve real problems for car shoppers and dealers, simplify for speed, and focus on what matters most. We win together or not at all. Here, your work counts, your ideas can help shape what’s next, and you’ll build alongside people who have your back.

We’re in the middle of a real transformation, modernizing the company and investing in AI and data to move faster. You're joining the No. 1 brand people think of first when shopping for a car, at the exact moment it's being rebuilt for what's next. You help decide what that becomes. That kind of influence is rare, and it's exactly why this is a place worth building your career.

Don't just take our word for it, we're proud to be named one of Built In's 2026 Best Places to Work in Chicago and across the U.S.

Ready to help build the most trusted place to buy and sell a car? Join us.

This role is remote, with priority given to candidates based in Chicago (IL) or Austin (TX). Onsite interviews may be required.

About the Role

Join us in shaping a future of Automotive Commerce. Cars.com builds solutions for automotive dealerships, manufacturers, and consumers. Our driving force is to deliver a single platform that simplifies everything about buying and selling cars.

Our Websites Engineering Team drives our Dealer Inspire platform. We are embarking on a transformational journey, building innovative and integrated services that redefine how we deliver value to our customers. As a Staff Software Engineer on our Websites Engineering Team, you will help revitalize our backend services and tooling across our platform with a comprehensive technical strategy to simplify and build scalable systems. This is an exceptional opportunity to shape the future of our platform and drive meaningful change at scale, making a lasting impact within the automotive industry.

You’ll work across team boundaries to design and develop components as well as performance-optimized back-end systems that scale across Dealer Inspire - Websites Engineering Team.

About You

You’re an experienced, results-oriented, Backend Staff Software Engineer who blends technical depth with product sensitivity. You’ve built and evolved design systems. You understand APIs integrations and scaling systems. You’re thoughtful about code ergonomics and thrive on creating tools other engineers love using. You can zoom out to architect reusable patterns, platforms and zoom in to debug specific code related issues.

You are a systems thinker who can see commonalities and connections across multiple use cases and design solutions that can be utilized internally and externally alike. Above all, you’re passionate about creating core capabilities and components that empower product and platform teams to innovate quickly and reliably.

Why You'll Be Excited About This Role
This opportunity enables you to...

Lead Backend Architecture: Define and drive reusable, reliable, and scalable back-end architectures across the Cars.com 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
Cross-Team Collaboration: 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.
Mentorship and Influence: Serve as a back-end thought leader and mentor, coaching other engineers and shaping team/department-wide best practices.
Drive Documentation and DX: Treat components and libraries as products. Develop excellent documentation, innovative usage patterns, and internal developer experience.
Contribute Full-Stack as Needed: Collaborate with backend developers to integrate UIs with APIs. While your focus is back-end, you’re comfortable navigating the full stack.

We're Excited About You Because…

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
Experience with the Node ecosystem is preferred. Candidates without Node experience but with a strong background in distributed systems, services, APIs, and backend development who are willing to learn new technologies are encouraged to apply.
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
Willingness to participate in an on-call rotation, providing prompt incident resolution and conducting postmortems to improve system reliability

Compensation

We share compensation up front so you have the information you need to make a confident decision. This range reflects target base compensation. Where you land depends on skills and experience. If this range works for you, we encourage you to apply.

Salary Range: $154,200.00-192,750.00
Benefits
Confidence, built in. The same confidence we build for car buyers and sellers, we build into how we treat our own:

Medical, dental & vision from day one — no waiting period
401(k) with company match, immediate vesting
Employee Stock Purchase Plan — buy Cars.com stock at a discount
Unlimited Flex Time Off, 11 paid holidays, 1 volunteer day
Paid parental and caregiver leave
$350 one-time home office stipend + $70/month for virtual-first work
Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
...and more — see our full Benefits, Perks & Culture here

Legal
For US-based positions: Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. We're unable to sponsor employment visas at this time.

Cars.com is an equal opportunity employer and values 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.

Applicants: click here to review our Privacy Policy for Applicants.
Current employees: click here to review our California Privacy Policy for Employees.