Software Engineer - PHP

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, our reputation-based digital wholesale auction marketplace, Dealerclub, 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 Challengeand 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.

[THIS IS A REMOTE ROLE - MAY REQUIRE ONSITE INTERVIEWS] 

ABOUT THE ROLE - 

Join us in shaping the future of Automotive Commerce. Our Transactional Platform Team is on a transformative journey, building innovative services that will redefine the way we deliver value as Cars Commerce is unifying the car-buying journey on a single, data-driven platform. 

Our Transactional Platform is the powerhouse behind the systems that keep our brands running — from payments and credit applications to incentives management and other key capabilities that enable seamless transactions across our entire portfolio. That includes industry-leading names like Cars.com, Dealer Inspire, AccuTrade, and our Media Network.

As a Software Engineer on our Incentives/Credit team, you’ll be part of an autonomous, high-impact group that builds and scales high-throughput, API-first services using Node.js and PHP, deployed on AWS EKS/ECS. These services fuel our most critical financial systems — powering everything from CreditIQ (our credit application platform) to our incentives management tools, which collectively support millions of car-buying transactions each year.

This is an incredible opportunity to make a real impact. You’ll collaborate closely with Product leadership to turn bold business goals into measurable, incremental outcomes. You’ll drive best-in-class engineering practices around observability, security, and reliability, ensuring your services perform flawlessly in production. As you grow in the role, you’ll have the chance to shape platform architecture, lead cross-domain integrations that open new revenue streams, and influence the future technical direction of the Transactional Platform.

Join us and build the technology that’s redefining how the automotive industry transacts! 

ABOUT YOU

You are a motivated software engineer who thrives in building scalable and reliable systems. You have a solid foundation in designing and developing services that can handle high traffic volumes while ensuring performance, security, and maintainability. You understand software architecture and engineering best practices and are comfortable following and contributing to technical decisions that balance speed, quality, and long-term stability.

You understand the importance of testing, observability, and CI/CD pipelines in delivering reliable systems. You have experience working with modern web technologies and are eager to learn containerization and orchestration patterns to optimize deployment, scalability, and resilience.

Above all, you're passionate about creating financial techn