Cars CommerceRemote
Principal Software Engineer (hands-on)
United States of America
Full Time
12 hours ago
$176,000 - $220,000 USD
No H1B
Key skills
High-concurrency distributed systemsEvent-driven architecturesKafkaMSKSub-second latency optimizationFrontend platform architectureState managementRBAC implementationUI performance optimizationTypeScriptNode.jsAI/LLM integrationNewSQLEdge computingAgentic AIStrategic advisoryInfluence via dataAILLMAgenticSDLC
About this role
Cars Commerce is focused on simplifying car buying and selling through innovative technology. The Principal Software Engineer will lead the Platform Core Services team, overseeing high-concurrency engines and driving the transformation of the automotive commerce ecosystem.
Responsibilities:
- Architectural Stewardship: Define the evolution of our services to support sub-second latency and massive concurrency. You will bridge the gap between heavy-lift backend systems and modern, intuitive UI products
- AI Orchestration: Redefine the SDLC by integrating LLM-based orchestration into the development workflow, significantly increasing the organization’s velocity
- Influence via Data: Lead the RFC process by driving consensus across engineering and product boundaries. You don't rely on "title power"—you use data, benchmarks, and clear trade-off analysis to align stakeholders
- Operational Excellence at Scale: Own the "Four Nines" (99.99%) for services handling tens of thousands of requests per second. You will treat observability and developer experience as first-class products
- Force Multiplier: Act as a sponsor for Staff and Senior engineers. You are responsible for raising the technical "ceiling" of the entire engineering organization
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science or equivalent industry experience
- 12+ years of software engineering excellence, including significant time at the Staff or Principal level
- Deep expertise in designing high-concurrency distributed systems
- Comfortable navigating complex data-consistency models, event-driven architectures (Kafka/MSK), and optimizing for sub-second latency
- Architect extensible frontend platforms
- Design robust State Management strategies
- Implement complex RBAC across the stack
- Ensure UI performance through efficient data-fetching patterns
- Expert in TypeScript/Node.js, but language-agnostic
- Proven ability to drive consensus in complex environments by using data—not just opinion—to influence stakeholders
- Track record of evaluating emerging technologies (e.g., NewSQL, Edge Computing, or Agentic AI) and running proof-of-concepts
- Experience within a large-scale, 'Big Tech,' or high-growth environment or FAANG, Uber, Stripe etc