Engineering Manager, Developer Experience

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 Developer Experience (DevX) Architecture team at CarGurus is looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a team focused on accelerating developer productivity and delivering architectural improvements for CarGurus Engineering. The results of your work will impact hundreds of engineers across dozens of product teams on a daily basis.

You and your team will take on complex, cross-cutting projects: defining new templates and processes, re-architecting core components, integrating new libraries and frameworks, improving backend performance, and building AI-powered developer tools that give CarGurus engineers a faster and better experience. To succeed in this role, you’ll partner closely with engineers and leaders across many teams, learn and adapt quickly, and translate ambiguous problems into clear, high-impact initiatives. You will own your projects end-to-end, lead a team of talented engineers, and collaborate with fellow engineering managers and product partners to solve interesting problems with broad scope.

What you’ll do

• Lead and grow a high-performing DevX engineering team, providing coaching, feedback, and clear expectations.

• Set and communicate architectural direction for developer experience, in partnership with Staff/Principal engineers and other platform teams.

• Own a roadmap of technical investments: propose ideas, shape scope, provide estimates, measure, and sequence work to maximize impact on engineering effectiveness.

• Partner across the organization with engineers, managers, and product to deeply understand their pain points and design pragmatic solutions that scale.

• Drive predictable delivery by breaking down ambiguous problems into small, testable increments and releasing value iteratively.

• Lead the full software development lifecycle for your team’s services and tools: design, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement, with a strong emphasis on clean, well-tested, and efficient code.

• Identify high leverage/ROI opportunities for AI-assisted development (code assistants, test generation, internal agents), partner with security and compliance to define guardrails, and integrate these capabilities into our SDLC

• Use technologies like Java, Spring Boot, AWS, Kubernetes, and AI-assisted development tools to improve our core architecture and platforms.

• Advance and champion engineering best practices (reliability, observability, performance, and security) and help teams adopt them through patterns, templates, and guidance.

• Strategically invest in critical platform areas, such as authentication and other shared services, to reduce risk and unlock faster delivery for product teams.

What you’ll bring

• 5+ years of hands-on software design and development experience building and operating production systems.

• 3+ years in an Engineering Manager or equivalent technical leadership role, leading teams that ship software in production.

• Experience building and operating large-scale, performant web applications, and familiarity with modern technologies and patterns that enable them (distributed systems, microservices, cloud-native architectures, observability, etc.).

• Hands-on experience with modern strongly typed backend languages (Java, C#, etc) and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, etc)

• Hands-on experience with modern AI tools (e.g., code assistants, test generation, or internal agents) and a perspective on how to responsibly apply them to improve developer experience.

• Strong project management and collaboration skills, including experience working across multiple teams and stakeholders in an iterative, agile environment.

• A people-focused technical leader with high emotional intelligence, who can motivate, coach, and develop engineers at different levels.

• A clear, adaptable communicator who can tailor your message for audiences ranging from junior engineers to senior business leaders and third-party vendors.

• A curious, growth-oriented mindset—you enjoy learning new domains, experimenting with new tools, and continually expanding your capabilities.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.

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
$186,000—$233,000 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.

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