Senior Support Engineer

Cargurus; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 92,000 - 115,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Daily lunch/pantry

New car discount

Wellness & fitness programs

Commuting cost coverage

Employee equity

Job summary

CarGurus LLC is seeking a Senior Support Engineer to bridge the gap between dealer-reported problems and engineering action. You will reproduce defects, read traces, validate IMS integrations, and decide if issues are bugs, config problems, or partner-side failures.

You will own FireHydrant triggers during business hours and collaborate with Tier 1/2 teams to improve support processes. Ideal candidates read logs and traces across multiple systems, validate API payloads, and have strong

Qualifications

• 4+ years in a technical support, support engineering, solutions engineering, or customer engineering role at a B2B company.
• Demonstrated ability to read logs and distributed traces (Observe, Honeycomb, Datadog, Splunk, or equivalent), validate API payloads, and reproduce defects in production software.
• Comfort working with SQL, XML, JSON, and REST API responses; basic scripting in Python, Bash, or a similar language to investigate issues.
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to translate between dealers, account teams, Product, and Engineering.
• Calm judgment in incident situations and the ability to make defensible 'is this an outage' calls.
• Experience supporting products with third-party data integrations (CRM, DMS, inventory feeds, ML/pricing services).
• Familiarity with FireHydrant, PagerDuty, or similar incident management tooling.
• Exposure to automotive retail, dealer software, or marketplace platforms.
• Experience standing up support processes for new product launches, not just operating mature ones.
• Salesforce Service Cloud familiarity.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical escalation point for all products, including SaaS ones.
• Reproduce dealer-reported issues in-product, read distributed traces in Observe and Honeycomb, and correlate logs across Site, Dealer Data Service, Pricing services, ML rec models, and IMS partner APIs.
• Distinguish true defects from expected behavior, configuration issues, or partner-side failures (DealerCenter, DealerSync, vAuto, Dealer Specialties, Vincue, MotorcarMarketing).
• Submit clean, reproducible tickets to Product Acceleration (PAES) and Engineering, with steps, evidence, and impact framing.
• Own the FireHydrant trigger decision during business hours for products; coordinate with on-call engineers during incidents.
• Partner with Tier 1 and Tier 2 Dealer Support Operations to handle escalations and upskill the team over time.
• Contribute to and maintain the Product Support Playbook: SLA framework, severity definitions, escalation paths, status page integration, named case routing in Salesforce.
• Validate launch readiness for new products against the COS/Engineering intake gate (uptime SLO, alerting, status page, escalation tree, training, dedicated Slack channel).
• Participate in postmortems and represent the customer-impact narrative; help drive resiliency improvements upstream.
• Build feedback loops with Product Marketing and Sales Specialists so dealer expectations align with what we can support.

Skills

Log analysis

SQL

XML

JSON

REST APIs

Python

Communication

Incident management

Salesforce Service Cloud

Automation troubleshooting

Tools

Observe

Honeycomb

Datadog

Splunk

FireHydrant

PagerDuty

Job description

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 Senior Support Engineer is the technical specialist inside Customer Operations & Support who closes the gap between "a dealer reports a problem" and "Engineering has a clean ticket to act on." You will reproduce defects, read traces and logs, validate IMS partner integrations, and decide whether an issue is a bug, expected behavior, a configuration problem, or a partner-side failure.

What you'll do

• Serve as the technical escalation point for all products, including SaaS ones.
• Reproduce dealer-reported issues in-product, read distributed traces in Observe and Honeycomb, and correlate logs across Site, Dealer Data Service, Pricing services, ML rec models, and IMS partner APIs.
• Distinguish true defects from expected behavior, configuration issues, or partner-side failures (DealerCenter, DealerSync, vAuto, Dealer Specialties, Vincue, MotorcarMarketing).
• Submit clean, reproducible tickets to Product Acceleration (PAES) and Engineering, with steps, evidence, and impact framing.
• Own the FireHydrant trigger decision during business hours for products; coordinate with on-call engineers during incidents.
• Partner with Tier 1 and Tier 2 Dealer Support Operations to handle escalations and upskill the team over time.
• Contribute to and maintain the Product Support Playbook: SLA framework, severity definitions, escalation paths, status page integration, named case routing in Salesforce.
• Validate launch readiness for new products against the COS/Engineering intake gate (uptime SLO, alerting, status page, escalation tree, training, dedicated Slack channel).
• Participate in postmortems and represent the customer-impact narrative; help drive resiliency improvements upstream.
• Build feedback loops with Product Marketing and Sales Specialists so dealer expectations align with what we can support.

What you'll bring

• 4+ years in a technical support, support engineering, solutions engineering, or customer engineering role at a B2B company.
• Demonstrated ability to read logs and distributed traces (Observe, Honeycomb, Datadog, Splunk, or equivalent), validate API payloads, and reproduce defects in production software.
• Comfort working with SQL, XML, JSON, and REST API responses; basic scripting in Python, Bash, or a similar language to investigate issues.
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to translate between dealers, account teams, Product, and Engineering.
• Calm judgment in incident situations and the ability to make defensible "is this an outage" calls.
• Experience supporting products with third-party data integrations (CRM, DMS, inventory feeds, ML/pricing services).
• Familiarity with FireHydrant, PagerDuty, or similar incident management tooling.
• Exposure to automotive retail, dealer software, or marketplace platforms.
• Experience standing up support processes for new product launches, not just operating mature ones.
• Salesforce Service Cloud familiarity.

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

$92,000 — $115,000 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