Senior Software Engineer, AI Developer Experience

Who we are

At CarGurus (NASDAQ: CARG), our mission is to give people the power to reach their destination. We started as a small team of developers determined to bring trust and transparency to car shopping. Since then, our history of innovation and go-to-market acceleration has driven industry-leading growth. In fact, we’re the largest and fastest-growing automotive marketplace, and we’ve been profitable for over 15 years.

What we do

The market is evolving, and we are too, moving the entire automotive journey online and guiding our customers through every step. That includes everything from the sale of an old car to the financing, purchase, and delivery of a new one. Today, tens of millions of consumers visit CarGurus.com each month, and ~30,000 dealerships use our products. But they're not the only ones who love CarGurus—our employees do, too. We have a people-first culture that fosters kindness, collaboration, and innovation, and empowers our Gurus with tools to fuel their career growth. Disrupting a trillion-dollar industry requires fresh and diverse perspectives. Come join us for the ride!

Role overview

The Developer Experience Architecture team at CarGurus builds the platforms, tooling, and standards that make hundreds of engineers faster, safer, and more productive. You will contribute to some of our highest-leverage initiatives: standardizing AI agentic development (Claude Code, our internal plugin marketplace, and MCP integrations), build AI powered features, help establish best practices for AI development at CarGurus, evolving our authentication and authorization platform (Keycloak, OAuth2/OIDC) and improving the paved paths for service and job creation on AWS. These complex problems will have global impact. You will own well-scoped pieces of work and partner with engineers and product managers across the org, with support and mentorship from senior teammates. And no, you do not need to know about cars to work here.

What you'll do

• Build and ship developer tooling, framework components, and reusable templates that raise engineering productivity and quality
• Contribute to our agentic development ecosystem: Claude Code configuration, plugins and skills, MCP servers and homegrown autonomous agentic coding platform
• Build and integrate AI agent workflows, leveraging LLM APIs and orchestration frameworks to automate and enhance user experiences
• Participate in the evaluation of new AI development technologies, libraries, and techniques, sharing findings with the broader team
• Support the rollout of AI tools and practices to engineering teams across CarGurus, including documentation and internal tooling
• Apply our standards, guardrails, and best practices in your work, and help product teams adopt them
• Continuously learn, experiment, and advocate for new technologies and methodologies that can move the business forward
• Investigate, root cause, and improve system reliability and performance

What you'll bring

• Five or more years of hands-on, full-stack software design and development, including at least three years of Python.
• Experience building web applications and working with cloud-native systems on AWS or similar cloud providers
• Production level hands-on exposure to AI frameworks or APIs (e.g. FastAPI, Anthropic, LangChain/LangGraph, LangFuse, Evals)
• Experience using modern AI coding tools (assistants, agents, MCP) on real engineering work, or eagerness to adopt them
• Experience with Java, client and server side JavaScript, and Terraform, is a plus
• Working knowledge of authentication and identity standards (OAuth2/OIDC), or a strong appetite to learn them
• Comfort writing tests, using observability tools, and owning well-scoped tasks end to end
• Curious, collaborative, and eager to learn with strong communication skills
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

The displayed range represents the expected annual base salary / On-Target Earnings (OTE) for this position. On-Target Earnings (OTE) is inclusive of base salary and on-target commission earnings, which applies exclusively to sales roles.

Individual pay within this range is determined by work location and other factors such as job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

This annual base salary forms part of a comprehensive Total Rewards Package. In addition to benefits, this role may qualify for discretionary bonuses/incentives and Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Position Pay Range

$140,000—$176,000 USD

Working at CarGurus

We reward our Gurus’ curiosity and passion with best-in-class benefits and compensation, including equity for all employees, both when they start and as they continue to grow with us. Our career development and corporate giving programs, as well as our employee resource groups (ERGs) and communities, help people build connections while making an impact in personally meaningful ways. A flexible hybrid model and robust time off policies encourage work-life balance and individual well-being. Thoughtful perks like daily free lunch, a new car discount, meditation and fitness apps, commuting cost coverage, and more help our people create space for what matters most in their personal and professional lives.

CarGurus may require in-person interviews as part of our hiring process, particularly for positions based in our Boston and Dublin offices. Candidates selected for an in-person interview will be notified in advance. Please be aware that travel expenses are the responsibility of the candidate.

We welcome all

CarGurus strives to be a place to which people can bring the ultimate expression of themselves and their potential—starting with our hiring process. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, or sexual orientation. We foster an inclusive environment that values people for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. That’s why we hope you’ll apply even if you don’t check every box listed in the job description. We also encourage you to tell your recruiter if you require accommodations to participate in our hiring process due to a disability so we can provide the appropriate support. We want to know what only you can bring to CarGurus. #LI-Hybrid