Senior Principal Engineer - Engineering Experience - Remote
CarMaxAbout the role
About this job
At CarMax, we are industry disruptors. At the heart of our innovation is new digital products. Working on many different aspects of the customer experience, our Senior Principal Engineers research and discover new opportunities and shape products to fulfill them. From inception to completion, you will develop tools and technology, learning quickly from our spirit of experimentation. You will have a direct impact on improving the performance of our business and ensuring customers can buy the vehicles they want in a way that is right for them!
Senior Principal Engineer - Engineering Experience
What you will do – Essential Responsibilities
- Work closely with fellow engineers across the full software development lifecycle to understand their challenges and needs, ensuring that they have the tools and support necessary to succeed in their roles.
- Design and implement best practices that elevate developer experience, leveraging AI-driven tools for code generation, review, and automation within the SDLC.
- Establish intelligent monitoring and observability platforms that use machine learning to proactively detect, prevent, diagnose, and resolve issues across hundreds of application instances, ensuring consistent reliability and streamlined maintenance.
- Collaborate in integrating AI solutions that enhance workflow efficiency, accelerate delivery, and support continuous improvement of application quality and developer productivity.
- Continuously evaluate emerging trends in AI, generative AI/LLM capabilities, and software engineering to ensure our developer practices and SDLC remain at the forefront of industry innovation and operational excellence.
- Lead efforts that embed reliability, SRE best practices, and cost effectiveness throughout the enterprise.
- Collaborate with colleagues in product design, product management and systems architecture to develop experimental solutions and bring great ideas to life.
- Market your innovative ideas internally and evolve them according to feedback and critique within an agile environment.
- Stay on top of industry trends and best practice to continuously improve what we do and ensure our customer experience is the best it can be.
- Provide leadership and mentoring to engineers.
Purpose of the role
Senior Principal Engineers in the Engineering Experience group partner with Engineers and Solution Architects to develop solutions and implement standards that ensure an unrivaled customer experience. You are an expert in your craft and seen as a platform and implementation owner, actively contributing to the industry with a passion for continuous learning, and acting as a change agent for adopting emerging AI and reliability practices.
Senior Principal Engineers practice hands-on development, oversee the technical tasks of others, and own the standards and best practices. Our Senior Principal Engineers act as technical mentors to others, excel in supporting multiple areas of the business, and strive to improve developer experience, helping fellow engineers have a better day at work.
It takes a passion for technology to develop ground-breaking products. Working collaboratively and creatively as part of a close-knit product team, you will be part of the development process from end to end: consulting users, carrying out experiments, tackling complex business problems, and implementing new products. You can balance customer needs with business goals and know how to deliver technical solutions that enhance business value. Creative, curious, and highly analytical, you never stop learning and thrive on constant change in the digital marketplace.
Qualifications and Requirements
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Decision Science, Engineering, Statistics, or a related field, or equivalent alternative education, skills, and/or practical experience is required and 8+ years of relevant work experience OR
- Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Decision Science, Engineering, Statistics, or a related field, or equivalent alternative education, skills, and/or practical experience is required and 6+ years of relevant work experience
Preferred Qualifications
- Expert experience as a software developer working with product teams
- Expert knowledge of programming languages/platforms such as C#, .NET, Azure, cloud-based SaaS, and PaaS solutions is preferred.
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