Lead Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer

Full-Stack Engineering

Department: Engineering / Product Development

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Senior (7+ years)

About the Role

We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer to own the technical direction of a full-stack product team. You will operate across the entire stack — from the component library and client-side state management layer through APIs, services, and data stores — making sure the pieces fit together into a cohesive, performant, and maintainable product. You'll pair deep hands-on coding with the judgment to decide what to build, how to build it, and when to push back.

This is a senior technical leadership role. You will set architectural direction, raise the quality bar through code review and design guidance, mentor engineers at every level, and partner closely with Product and Design to turn ambiguous problems into shipped software. You lead by building trust — through the quality of your technical decisions, the clarity of your communication, and your commitment to the team's growth.

What You'll Do

Technical Leadership

• Define and drive the full-stack technical roadmap in partnership with Product and Design, balancing feature velocity with platform health and technical debt reduction.

• Establish and evolve architectural standards, coding conventions, and design patterns across frontend and backend systems.

• Lead design reviews and RFC processes for significant features and system changes; serve as the final technical decision-maker for the team.

• Own cross-cutting concerns — API contract design, authentication/authorization flows, performance budgets, accessibility standards, and data modeling strategy.

• Represent the team in cross-functional architecture forums; communicate technical trade-offs, risks, and timelines to engineering leadership and non-technical stakeholders.

Frontend Engineering

• Architect and build modern, responsive user interfaces using React (or equivalent framework) with a focus on performance, accessibility, and developer ergonomics.

• Define and maintain the component library and design system implementation, ensuring consistency between design specs and shipped UI.

• Drive frontend performance — bundle optimization, code splitting, lazy loading, caching strategies, and Core Web Vitals improvement.

• Establish frontend testing strategy including unit, integration, visual regression, and end-to-end tests.

• Champion accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) and internationalization as first-class engineering concerns, not afterthoughts.

Backend Engineering

• Design, build, and scale RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs that serve the product's frontend, mobile clients, and third-party integrations.

• Architect backend services for reliability, horizontal scalability, and operational clarity — clean domain boundaries, idempotent operations, graceful degradation, and structured logging.

• Own data modeling and database design (relational and/or NoSQL); optimize query performance, indexing strategies, and migration workflows.

• Implement and enforce authentication, authorization, and data-privacy patterns across the service layer.

• Design event-driven architectures and async processing pipelines where appropriate (message queues, pub/sub, background workers).

Team Development & Culture

• Mentor and coach SE1–SE3 engineers through code reviews, pairing sessions, design guidance, and career development conversations.

• Foster a culture of quality — meaningful code review, automated testing, continuous integration, and iterative delivery.

• Contribute to hiring — define technical interview standards, conduct interviews, and calibrate the hiring bar for the team.

• Identify skill gaps and create learning paths, documentation, and internal tech talks to elevate the team's capabilities across the stack.

• Partner with Product and Design from discovery through delivery, providing early technical input that shapes what's feasible and what's wise.

What You Bring

Required

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3 years working across the full stack and at least 2 years in a technical leadership capacity.

• Expert-level proficiency in a modern frontend framework (React, Vue, or Angular) including state management, routing, build tooling, and performance optimization.

• Expert-level proficiency in at least one backend language and framework (Node.js/TypeScript, Python/Django/FastAPI, Java/Spring, Go, or C#/.NET).

• Deep experience designing and building RESTful APIs and/or GraphQL services at production scale.

• Strong database skills — relational modeling (PostgreSQL, MySQL), query optimization, migrations, and working knowledge of at least one NoSQL store (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis).

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes, or equivalent).

• Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines, automated testing strategies (unit, integration, e2e), and trunk-based or GitFlow branching models.

• Demonstrated ability to write and present technical RFCs, architecture decision records, and design documents that drive alignment across teams.

• Proven track record of mentoring engineers, raising code quality standards, and influencing engineering practices beyond your immediate team.

• Excellent communication skills; able to translate complex technical decisions for Product, Design, and leadership audiences.

Preferred

• Experience building and maintaining a shared component library or design system (Storybook, Chromatic, or similar).

• Familiarity with micro-frontend architectures or module federation patterns for large-scale frontend applications.

• Experience with event-driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SNS/SQS) and asynchronous processing patterns.

• Working knowledge of observability tools and practices — structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), and application performance monitoring.

• Experience with feature flagging, A/B testing infrastructure, and progressive rollout strategies.

• Familiarity with accessibility auditing tools and processes (axe, Lighthouse, screen reader testing).

• Contributions to open-source projects or published technical writing.

How You Lead

– Full-stack ownership — you don't hand off problems at the API boundary. You follow a feature from the database schema through the service layer to the pixel on screen, and you expect the same from your team.

– Pragmatic architect — you know the difference between the ideal solution and the right solution for right now. You make deliberate trade-offs, document them, and revisit when the context changes.

– Quality through systems, not heroics — you build guardrails (linters, tests, CI checks, design reviews) so the team ships quality by default, not by individual vigilance.

– User-centered technologist — you care deeply about what users experience. Performance, accessibility, and interface clarity aren't checkboxes — they're engineering priorities.

– Multiplier, not bottleneck — you write great code, but you'd rather teach someone else to write great code. You delegate meaningfully, give feedback that sticks, and create space for others to grow.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary, equity compensation, and performance-based bonus.

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits.

• Flexible work arrangements (remote / hybrid options).

• Professional development budget for conferences, courses, and certifications.

• Modern tech stack with autonomy to improve tooling and processes.

• A collaborative engineering culture that values craft, continuous learning, and shipping software that matters.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to c

Drug Testing

To be employed in this role, you'll need to clear a pre-employment drug test. Cox Automotive does not currently administer a pre-employment drug test for marijuana for this position. However, we are a drug-free workplace, so the possession, use or being under the influence of drugs illegal under federal or state law during work hours, on company property and/or in company vehicles is prohibited.

Benefits

The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement