Senior DevOps Engineer

cars; United States; On-site; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Cars Commerce in Chicago is seeking a Sr. DevOps Engineer to modernize our deployment pipelines and infrastructure.

You’ll lead CI/CD initiatives, design scalable backend tooling, and drive operational maturity across teams while maintaining high availability for Dealers and consumers. You’ll work with developers, security engineers, and IT operations to codify infrastructure, monitor systems, and automate security controls.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of combined developer and DevOps/SRE experience in CI/CD, scripting, and automation.

Responsibilities

• Own CI/CD pipelines to automate build, test, and deployment.
• Own infrastructure as code on AWS to ensure reliability and scalability.
• Define and enforce standards for automation, monitoring, and security.
• Collaborate with developers, security, and IT operations to streamline delivery.
• Troubleshoot complex deployments and drive incident prevention.

Skills

CI/CD

Scripting

Automation

DevOps/SRE

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

AWS

Terraform

Git

Job description

Be essential at Cars Commerce

At Cars Commerce, we're fanatical about simplifying everything about car buying and selling. We do right by our customers and consumers to better connect the industry with simplified and tierless technology to enhance, measure and drive local automotive retail. Whether through our No.1 most recognized marketplace, Cars.com, our industry-leading digital experience, Dealer Inspire, our trade and appraisal technology, AccuTrade, our reputation-based digital wholesale auction marketplace, Dealerclub, or our new Cars Commerce Media Network, Cars Commerce is essential for success in the automotive industry.

No one ever travels alone here: at its core, Cars Commerce is collaboration. In fact, it's built into the very fabric of our shared values. We like to say we Rise Together - putting people at the center of what we do, from consumer to customer to community. Life at Cars Commerce makes it easy when we share the ethos to be Open to All, encouraging open-minded communication because we know diverse thinking yields better outcomes. But critical to our success is Caring to Challenge and Taking Ownership, fueling a competitive spirit in a respectful environment where we think about tomorrow but act today. At our foundation, we have integrity, Doing the Right Thing, even when it's hard. It's our shared commitment to these values that makes Cars Commerce a place where growth becomes not only possible, but downright unavoidable.

But don't take our word for it. We are proud to be named one of Built In's 2026 Best Places to Work in Chicago and across the U.S. Ready to make your mark? Join a team that's driving real change in the automotive industry.

About the Role [Remote and must be located in the Chicago area. May require onsite interviews]

Join us in shaping the future of Automotive Commerce. Cars Commerce builds a single platform that simplifies buying and selling cars for dealerships, manufacturers, and consumers.

Our Websites Engineering Team drives the Dealer Inspire platform, and we're modernizing our backend services and tooling with a comprehensive technical strategy to build scalable systems. As a DevOps Engineer (Sr. Software Engineer), you'll help revitalize how we deliver software - leading projects, raising operational standards, and building the systems our customers depend on.

This role sits within the Dealer Inspire Websites DevOps team and works closely with the broader Website Engineering and Cloud Engineering teams at Cars Commerce.

About You

You're an experienced DevOps engineer You've built CI/CD systems people actually trust. You think in infrastructure-as-code and treat manual changes as a last resort, not a habit. You're the person who notices when a dashboard is missing before an incident happens, not after. You can zoom out to set standards for a team and zoom in to fix the one flaky deploy step that's been bugging everyone. Above all, you care about operational maturity - not for its own sake, but because it's how teams move fast without breaking things.

Why You'll Be Excited About This Role

• Own CI/CD : Design and implement pipelines that automate build, test, and deployment - and keep getting better.
• Own Infrastructure : Provision, configure, and manage infrastructure as code on AWS.
• Sharpen the Toolkit : Evaluate and maintain the tools that shape how the team ships - version control, containerization, configuration management.
• Build Visibility : Stand up monitoring, dashboards, and alerting so problems get caught before they become incidents.
• Bake in Security : Integrate security best practices into development and deployment as a default, not an afterthought.
• Collaborate Across Teams : Work with developers, security engineers, and IT operations to keep DevOps a shared practice, not a silo.
• Solve Hard Problems: Troubleshoot complex issues and land solutions that make the delivery process better going forward.
• Prioritize with Judgment: Break down and manage work - yours and sometimes the team's - against what matters most, and connect it back to company goals.
• Use AI Responsibly: Champion AI tool adoption to boost velocity, with the depth to vet and own what it produces.
• Deliver for Stakeholders: Partner on requirements and prioritization, and see the work through to completion.
• Raise the Bar: Establish and document the standards that build operational maturity across the team and org.
• Keep Things Running: Plan and execute routine maintenance and auditing, and take your turn in the on-call rotation.

You'll also be an ambassador of Cars.com's Core Values: Challenge & Collaborate; Start with the Consumer; Be Bold; Build Relationships; Deliver Results; Focus on the Outcome; Stay Open.

We're Excited About You Because...

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of combined developer and DevOps/SRE experience in CI/CD, scripting, and automation, including work in a c