Job Description

Company

Cox Automotive - USA

Engineering / Product Development

Sr Software Engineer

Individual Contributor

Hybrid - Ability to work remotely part of the week

No

Day

Compensation

Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $101,500.00 - $169,100.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.

As a Senior Software Engineer within NextGear Capital, you will play a critical role in designing, building, and evolving the applications, platforms, and digital capabilities that support one of the automotive industry's leading inventory finance businesses. Working at the intersection of technology, product, and business strategy, you'll help deliver solutions that improve operational efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and enable the organization's continued investment in innovation and modernization.

This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who thrives in complex environments and enjoys turning ambiguous business challenges into scalable, maintainable software solutions. You will partner closely with product managers, architects, engineers, and business stakeholders to define technical approaches, decompose complex initiatives, and drive delivery of high-quality software across the full development lifecycle.

As a senior member of the engineering organization, you will be expected to contribute beyond feature implementation by influencing development practices, mentoring teammates, raising engineering standards, and helping guide technical decision-making across products and services. You'll regularly balance short-term delivery objectives with long-term maintainability, scalability, and operational excellence.

At NextGear Capital, AI-assisted software development is becoming a foundational component of how engineering teams operate. In this role, you will help shape and mature those practices by effectively leveraging modern AI tools throughout the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), sharing best practices, refining team workflows, and ensuring AI-augmented development remains grounded in sound engineering judgment, quality, security, and accountability.

Success in this position requires strong full-stack engineering capabilities, a passion for continuous improvement, and the ability to influence outcomes through technical expertise, collaboration, and execution. You'll have opportunities to contribute to architectural discussions, drive engineering improvements, mentor fellow developers, and help define the future of software development within an organization actively investing in AI-driven transformation and modern engineering practices.

What You'll Do:

• Collaborate with AI agents and tools to build, test, and deploy software across the SDLC, providing proper contextual inputs to improve AI understanding and output quality
• Define coding standards, review practices, and ethical guidelines for AI use
• Mentor peers and coach junior team members on AI-augmented development
• Serve as a participating member on teams tasked to develop, improve, and deliver product/system elements and features
• Break down functional and business requirements into tangible, clear, and estimable objectives, providing recommendations to management and project team members
• Own Spec Driven Development (SDD) sessions with the team, turning ambiguous requirements into structured, actionable specs
• Coach teammates on how to break work down into clear, estimable objectives themselves, rather than doing it for them every time
• Ensure quality, performance, and adherence to specifications of assigned development tasks and adjacent technology solutions
• Establish and improve observability practices (logging, metrics, tracing, alerting) across owned systems, using them to proactively identify risk, guide architectural decisions, and diagnose issues before they impact clients
• Work with fellow team members to ensure design, development, and execution align with and support adjacencies and adhere to established architectural standards
• Notify the team or technical manager of variances from plans and identify changes in scope or work
• Help define and support implementation of coding standards
• Offer technical guidance to less experienced team members
• Participate in code reviews, both giving and receiving feedback

OUTCOMES

• Working Software, Every Sprint: Produce working software each sprint that meets the definition of done, delivers expected value, and stays within constraints defined by engineering leadership, with solution complexity broadly understood well enough to drive consistent, meaningful estimates across the team
• AI Fluency & Standards: Drive AI-augmented workflows and standards (coding, review, ethical use) that measurably improve team speed and quality. Mentor others in adopting them
• Quality Solutions: Deliver maintainable, testable, and performant software that leverages existing patterns, is sufficiently abstract, and meets client needs across adjacent systems
• Craft Growth & Mentorship: Continue pursuing engineering craft mastery while actively growing the skills of less experienced teammates
• Plan Transparency: Ensure changes in direction that affect time, effort, cost, or scope are surfaced to the team and above with urgency that maximizes the team's ability to replan or pivot
• Initiative: Identify opportunities for automation, improvement, or learning and drive them independently

Who You Are:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline and 4 years’ experience in a related field. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as a master’s degree and 2 years’ experience; a Ph.D. and up to 1 year of experience; or 16 years’ experience in a related field
• AI-Augmented Mindset: Advanced, deliberate use of AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, etc.) across the SDLC, including judgment on when AI assistance is and isn't appropriate. Actively experiments with, defines, and leads the team's adoption of AI-Augmented development and practices.
• Problem Solving: Analytical and architectural judgment. Resolves complex, ambiguous problems and anticipates downstream impacts, risks, and dependencies
• Full Stack Depth: Demonstrated depth across the stack you support (e.g., a backend framework such as Java/Spring Boot, a frontend framework such as React, and SQL/relational data modeling), with the ability to work confidently across adjacent layers and systems
• Version Control & Collaboration: Fluent with Git workflows and comfortable guiding others on branching, review, and collaborative development practices
• Observability: Strong working knowledge of logging, metrics, tracing, and monitoring tools (e.g., New Relic, dashboards, alerts), with the ability to establish or improve observability practices for a system rather than just consume them
• Communication & Influence: Clearly communicates technical tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations to management and project team members

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.

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 leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.

Through groundbreaking technology and a commitment to stellar experiences for drivers and dealers alike, Cox Automotive employees are transforming the way the world buys, owns, sells – or simply uses – cars. Cox Automotive employees get to work on iconic consumer brands like Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book and industry-leading dealer-facing companies like vAuto and Manheim, all while enjoying the people-centered atmosphere that is central to our life at Cox. Benefits of working at Cox may include health care insurance (medical, dental, vision), retirement planning (401(k)), and paid days off (sick leave, parental leave, flexible vacation/wellness days, and/or PTO). For more details on what benefits you may be offered, visit our benefits page. Cox is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer – All qualified applicants/employees will receive consideration for employment without regard to that individual’s age, race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, ethnicity, citizenship, or any other characteristic protected by law. Cox provides reasonable accommodations when requested by a qualified applicant or employee with disability, unless such accommodations would cause an undue hardship.EOE, including disability/vets