Senior Engineering Manager - Transactional Platform

Employment Type: Full time

Position Overview

Cars Commerce is seeking an empathetic, outcomes-oriented leader with 10+ years in software engineering and 5+ years leading teams to lead autonomous engineering teams. These teams will build high-throughput, API-first services that power payments, credit applications, and incentives management across Cars Commerce's unified car-buying platform. You will 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.

About the Role

Cars Commerce is unifying the car-buying journey on a single, data-driven platform. The 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 will:

• Guide autonomous teams that own several high-throughput, API-first services built in PHP / Node.js and deployed on AWS EKS / ECS.
• Work closely 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.
• Serve as incident commander and steward of production reliability for your domain.
• 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 are an empathetic, outcomes-oriented leader who balances people, process, and product. You should have:

• Strong experience with cloud-native architectures (AWS, Kubernetes).
• Experience with API-driven systems.
• Experience scaling backend services.
• The ability to foster psychological safety.
• A data-driven decision-making approach.
• A belief that great ideas can come from anywhere.

Note: Curiosity, action orientation, and inclusive leadership matter more than a perfect match of tech stack or automotive experience.

Company Information

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.

Our Core Values:

• Rise Together: Putting people at the center of what we do.
• Open to All: Encouraging open-minded communication for diverse thinking.
• Caring to Challenge: Fueling a competitive spirit in a respectful environment.
• Taking Ownership: Thinking about tomorrow but acting today.
• Doing the Right Thing: Maintaining integrity, even when it's hard.

Cars Commerce is a place where growth becomes not only possible, but downright unavoidable. 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.