FRONT END LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER - STAFF

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

Cars Commerce builds solutions for automotive dealerships, manufacturers, and consumers. Our driving force is to deliver one platform to simplify everything about buying and selling cars. The Platform and Core Services organization creates the foundational capabilities used across our product portfolio, enabling speed, consistency, and innovation.

Join us in shaping a future of Automotive Commerce. Our Platform Core Services team is embarking on a transformation journey, building innovative services and redefining how we deliver value to our customers. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will help revitalize our customer-facing tooling across our platform with a comprehensive technical strategy to simplify and amplify these user experiences and the capabilities they enable. This is an exceptional opportunity to influence the future of our platform and drive meaningful change at scale to make an impact within the automotive industry.

We are seeking candidates who bring deep expertise in front-end and browser technologies, a passion for thoughtful developer and user experience design, and the ability to architect reusable component systems. This role will help drive the creation of core UI capabilities to power user experiences across the Cars Commerce platform.

You’ll work across team boundaries to design and develop reusable components with developer-friendly APIs, as well as performance-optimized front-end systems that scale across teams and brands.

About You

You’re an experienced, results-oriented, front-end/full-stack software engineer who blends technical depth with product sensitivity. You’ve built and evolved design systems. You understand browsers inside and out. You’re thoughtful about code ergonomics and thrive on creating tools other engineers love using. You can zoom out to architect reusable UI platforms and zoom in to debug layout issues across multiple browsers.

You champion performance (Core Web Vitals, caching, async assets), prioritize usability and accessibility, and bring a platform mindset to front-end development. You understand the importance of testing, observability, and CI/CD build pipelines to reliably and consistently deliver value-driving applications.

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.

Responsibilities

• Lead Front-End Architecture: Define and drive reusable, reliable, and scalable front-end architectures across the Cars Commerce platform experiences.

• Author and Evolve Component Libraries: Lead design and development of shared UI components and design systems, with attention to accessibility, theming, maintainability, and developer ergonomics.

• Champion UX and Front-End Performance: Optimize user-focused performance across browsers and devices. Partner with design and product to improve interactivity and visual fidelity.

• Cross-Team Collaboration: Work closely with engineering, design, and product partners across teams to align on front-end strategies and standards, elevate UI consistency, and reduce duplication.

• Mentorship and Influence: Serve as a front-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 front-end, you’re comfortable navigating the full stack.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience

• 8+ years of experience in front-end engineering, including a deep knowledge of JavaScript (and TypeScript), having working familiarity with, but no loyalty to, multiple frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte, etc)

• Expert-level understanding of browser fundamentals: HTML, CSS (Flexbox, Grid), DOM, event lifecycle, rendering, and performance tuning.

• Strong experience using browser dev tools across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc. for layout debugging, JS tracing, and performance profiling.

• Demonstrated experience architecting and maintaining component-based design systems with support for theming, responsive behavior, and accessibility.

• Passion for user experience, developer ergonomics, and performance measurement (including Core Web Vitals).

• Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives, influence others, and align multiple teams around technical direction.

• Solid understanding of working with back-end technologies, architectural patterns, RESTful APIs, and authentication and authorization patterns (OAuth, JWT, etc.).

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences

• Willingness to participate in an on-call rotation, providing prompt incident resolution, and conducting postmortems to improve system reliability

Nice-to-have, but not necessary:

• Experience building production applications using a Server Driven UI (SDUI) approach to build across web and mobile clients.

• Experience with Elixir and the Phoenix framework. Candidates without Elixir experience but with a strong background in equivalent technology stacks (e.g., Ruby on Rails) who are willing to learn new technologies are encouraged to apply.

• Experience working in a platform or shared services organization.

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.