Team Lead, Software Development Engineering (Communications Platform)

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 As a Team Lead on the Communications team at CarGurus, you will be a player-coach leading the vision for our central outbound digital messaging infrastructure. You will own the platforms responsible for delivering email, push notifications, and SMS to both consumers and dealers. By driving a multi-channel integration strategy with third-party vendors like Iterable and Twilio, you will empower downstream product groups through self-service tools and ensure impactful messaging across every CarGurus touchpoint. What you’ll do • Balance Leadership and Execution: Manage a small, distributed engineering team of direct hires and contractors while actively contributing to architecture decisions and the codebase. • Drive Technical Architecture: Lead the design, development, and maintenance of robust backend systems and APIs that power our communication services. • Foster Team Growth: Lead with empathy and active listening to coach your team, building inclusive, high-trust partnerships across US-based and offshore engineering talent. • Enable Internal Teams & Manage Vendors: Build tools and processes for product teams to easily launch messaging campaigns, and manage technical integrations with essential third-party platforms. • Ensure Compliance and Reliability: Champion message delivery performance, system uptime, and strict adherence to privacy and marketing regulations in the industry. • Own the Roadmap: Partner closely with Product Managers to translate vague concepts into actionable roadmaps, setting high standards and taking full ownership of project milestones within our 2-week Scrum sprints. • Communicate & Advocate: Use data to clearly inform decisions, actively advocating for prioritization with cross-functional downstream partners and senior leadership. What you'll bring • Experience: 5+ years of software engineering experience at scale, with a strong emphasis on backend system development. • Leadership: 1 year of people management experience or experience leading technical direction and project management, with the desire to transition into formal people management. • Backend Expertise: Deep, hands-on knowledge of Java, Java-based frameworks, and the design and management of APIs. • Infrastructure & Observability: Experience working within an AWS ecosystem and utilizing debugging and monitoring tools such as Grafana and Honeycomb. • Stakeholder Collaboration: A proven track record of articulating business value to downstream consumers and managing complex third-party vendor relationships. • AI Tools: Experience with AI coding tools like Claude, and knowledge of messaging protocols or privacy compliance.