Principal Software Engineer — AI-Powered Recommendations

CarGurus LLC; Boston, Northern (MA, KY); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 212,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible hybrid model

Equity for all employees

Daily free lunch

New car discount

Job summary

CarGurus is seeking a Principal Software Development Engineer to define and deliver the next generation of car recommendations for millions of shoppers. You will provide technical leadership across the recommendation domain, shaping architecture and strategy while mentoring engineers and collaborating with Data Science, Product, and other teams.

You will work on ranking, personalization, experimentation, and reliable consumer experiences, leveraging ML advances to accelerate delivery, with a

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience building and operating large-scale, customer-facing systems.
• Deep expertise in software architecture, distributed systems, APIs, and production engineering.
• Experience leading technical direction across teams and driving complex initiatives.
• Strong experience with Kotlin, Java, C#, Python, or similar languages (Kotlin preferred).
• Strong SQL and relational database experience, including performance considerations.
• Experience partnering with Data Science or ML teams to bring models into production.
• Excellent communication and influence skills with cross-functional partners.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for our recommendation platform and drive architecture across multiple teams.
• Build scalable recommendation systems using shopper, vehicle, inventory, and behavioral signals.
• Partner with Data Science to productionize models and improve recommendation quality.
• Drive personalization, ranking, experimentation, and AI-powered experiences across the shopper journey.
• Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives from design through delivery and measurement.
• Improve the reliability, scalability, observability, and operational excellence of services.
• Influence technical decisions and mentor engineers to raise the engineering bar.

Skills

Software engineering

Distributed systems

Architecture

Technical leadership

AI/ML curiosity

Communication

Hands-on coding

Recommendation systems

Cloud-native

Experience with ML platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kotlin

Java

C#

Python

Job description

CarGurus is seeking a Principal Software Development Engineer to define and deliver the next generation of car recommendations for millions of shoppers. You will provide technical leadership across the recommendation domain, shaping architecture and strategy while mentoring engineers and collaborating with Data Science, Product, and other teams.

You will work on ranking, personalization, experimentation, and reliable consumer experiences, leveraging ML advances to accelerate delivery, with a