Principal Software Engineer

Cox Communications; Carmel (IN); Hybrid; USD 163,000 - 272,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Paid time off

Flexible vacation/wellness days

Job summary

Cox Automotive is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to own the architecture for the AWS Quick customization layer and the AI Artifact Hub. You will lead hands‑on engineering, review designs, and steer cross‑team integration across Cox Automotive’s enterprise tools and data workflows.

You will shape architecture, drive reliability, and mentor engineers while collaborating with AWS and security teams. A strong background in Python, cloud platforms, and AI/ML systems is essential for success in

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience across the software development life cycle, architecture, and platform delivery.
• Strong experience designing and delivering cloud‑native platforms on AWS, including compute, storage, networking, IAM, observability, and infrastructure automation.
• Experience designing, building, or operating AI/ML‑powered systems with patterns like RAG or agent‑based architectures.

Responsibilities

• Define end‑to‑end architecture for the AWS Quick customization layer, including connectors and agent orchestration.
• Own MCP strategy for enterprise integrations: contracts, governance, auth, and safety boundaries.
• Lead technical direction of the AI Artifact Hub and hardening plan as adoption grows.
• Establish design standards for MCP servers, tools, APIs, and reusable patterns for agents and skills.
• Set verification practices for AI‑assisted software development and drive platform reliability.

Skills

Python

Architecture design

AWS cloud

Technical leadership

Code review

Incident response

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Terraform

Docker

Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

Step Functions

Job description

Job Summary

Company Cox Automotive - USA Job Family Group Engineering / Product Development Job Profile Principal Software Engineer Management Level Director Flexible Work Option Hybrid - Ability to work remotely part of the week Travel % Yes, 5% of the time Work Shift Day Compensation Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $163,400.00 - $272,300.00. 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.

Job Description

Cox Automotive is deploying enterprise AI capabilities on AWS Quick across the enterprise, helping teams work more effectively in their day-to-day operations. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to own technical direction for the platform, the applications, and integrations around it. This role shapes architecture across two products: AWS Quick, an emerging AI platform for agents and enterprise connectors; and an established internal AI Artifact Hub used across Cox Automotive that lets engineering and product teams publish and share interactive artifacts through a web experience and an MCP server interface. This is a hands‑on technical leadership role. You will make the key architecture and engineering decisions, lead engineers through implementation, and stay close enough to the code to review designs, debug difficult issues, and contribute where it matters. The team builds connectors, agents, knowledge bases and data pipelines, and quality systems that integrate Quick with Cox Automotive’s core enterprise tools and operational systems. This is early‑stage work with executive sponsorship, direct access to AWS technical teams, and the autonomy to define the architecture.

What You'll Do

Architecture & Technical Direction Own the end-to-end architecture for the AWS Quick customization layer, including connectors, agent orchestration, knowledge ingestion, service boundaries, and infrastructure as code. Define the Model Context Protocol (MCP) strategy for enterprise integrations: tool contracts, governance, authentication, authorization, and safety boundaries. Own the technical direction of the AI Artifact Hub. Assess its current state, define a hardening plan, and improve reliability as adoption grows. Make and document major architecture decisions, including the trade-offs behind them. Build for near‑term delivery without closing off the platform’s next stage. Work with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Cloud Automation, and AWS technical teams to align platform direction and resolve cross‑team issues.

AI Platform Engineering & Quality Own the quality and evaluation approach for AI capabilities, including automated regression tests, measurable acceptance criteria, and human‑in‑the‑loop (HITL) feedback. Lead technical decisions around enterprise knowledge and retrieval, including ingestion, content curation, metadata, knowledge graphs, retrieval quality, context management, and platform‑supported RAG configuration. Define standards and reusable patterns for agents and skills. Set the design for MCP servers, tool interfaces, and structured APIs intended for agent use. Establish spec‑driven, verification‑first practices for AI‑assisted software development. Evaluate new capabilities and adopt them when they improve delivery without weakening quality or security.

Resilient Distributed Systems Set production reliability standards for AI‑enabled integrations, including monitoring, observability, graceful degradation, and incident response. Define failure and recovery patterns: timeouts, bounded retries with backoff, circuit breakers, and clear fallback behavior. Define idempotency and durable workflow patterns for operations that cross service or third‑party boundaries. Lead response to significant platform incidents and drive the follow‑up engineering work.

Technical Leadership & Influence Lead architecture and design reviews. Pair with engineers on the hardest problems and raise the team’s engineering judgment. Guide the team’s Python implementation through design, code review, debugging, and targeted production contributions. Serve as a senior technical contact for AWS on platform architecture, product capabilities, and roadmap needs. Explain technical direction and trade‑offs clearly to engineering, product, security, and senior leadership. Represent the platform team in cross‑organization technical forums and build alignment across team boundaries.

Who You Are

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and 10 years’ experience in a related field. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as a master’s degree and 8 years’ experience; a Ph.D. and 5 years’ experience in a related field; or 22 years’ experience in a related field. 10+ years of experience across the software development life cycle, architecture, and platform delivery. Strong experience designing and delivering cloud‑native platforms on AWS, including compute, storage, networking, IAM, observability, and infrastructure automation. Experience designing, building, or operating AI/ML‑powered systems, with exposure to emerging patterns such as RAG, knowledge retrieval, or agent‑based architectures. Strong software engineering fundamentals and working proficiency in Python. Able to design, review, debug, and contribute to Python‑based connectors, pipelines, and tooling. Experience defining evaluation and quality approaches for software, including regression testing, measurable acceptance criteria, HITL review, or other methods suited to non‑deterministic systems. A track record of enterprise integration work across SaaS, data platforms, and operational systems, including API design, authentication (OAuth2.0, OIDC, SSO), data quality, and reliability concerns. Demonstrated ownership of a platform or system architecture used by multiple engineering teams. Experience setting technical direction and influencing decisions across team boundaries without relying on formal authority. Experience establishing engineering practices and team norms in a newly formed team. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States for any employer without current or future sponsorship. Ability to work in the office three days per week. Willingness to participate in an on‑call rotation and lead incident response for production platform systems.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with Amazon Bedrock, AWS managed AI/ML services, or a comparable enterprise AI platform. Experience working directly with a cloud or platform vendor on product capabilities and roadmap priorities. Familiarity with the MCP specification and SDKs, or experience building comparable agent/tool integration layers and governance patterns. Background in knowledge graphs, graph databases, or enterprise knowledge and retrieval systems. Experience with Infrastructure as Code (preferably Terraform) and CI/CD for cloud or AI‑enabled systems. Familiarity with GitHub Actions and self‑hosted runners is a plus. Experience with HITL workflows, agent orchestration, evaluation harnesses, or LLM‑backed middleware. Experience with Snowflake, including semantic views or similar semantic‑layer technology. Background in data loss prevention, PII redaction, or zero‑trust data pipelines. Experience building internal developer platforms, developer tooling, or platform‑as‑a‑product capabilities. Experience taking ownership of an inherited codebase and bringing it to a supportable, well‑documented state. Experience with event‑driven architectures and workflow engines such as AWS Step Functions or Temporal. Experience establishing spec‑driven development, evaluation, governance, or verification practices for AI‑assisted engineering. Prior work in automotive, media, or another large enterprise with a complex system landscape is an advantage but not required. Experience designing and operating APIs for other teams, including versioning and backward compatibility.

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

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.

About Us

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. 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 Cox brings together the world’s greatest minds to help breathe life into new possibilities – and drive innovation for a better future. That’s why we look for individuals who share our pioneering spirit, have imaginative ideas and are fearless when it comes to tackling the world’s biggest challenges. Our people love technology – and they love making a difference. They have a passion for finding new solutions and working with brilliant colleagues. Every day they dedicate themselves to a huge range of exciting projects, contributing to the Cox vision around the global. From engineering new sustainability solutions that conserve water and energy to creating the infrastructure for the smart cities of tomorrow, there’s no challenge too great for our pioneers. And there’s no shortage of opportunities for you to make a difference. Come and experience the dynamic, collaborative and creative environments where your ideas are welcome and new discoveries are waiting. To help you grow to your full potential, we strive to support our employees in their career aspirations and promote the freedom to explore new horizons.