Principal AI Engineer, AI Solutions

Role Overview

Car Gurus is transforming its operations by embedding AI into workflows across every function — product, engineering, revenue, finance, support. This is a software engineering role focused on the entire business. You’ll work directly with teams across the organization to understand how work gets done, identify where AI can change the unit of work or shift judgment, and build production‑quality software that makes it real.

The role is high‑autonomy, reporting to the Head of AI Solutions, and you’ll have outsized influence on how a publicly traded company with $1B in revenue adopts AI as a structural change in how the business runs.

• Design and build AI‑powered workflows and agent‑based systems that transform how teams operate across the company.
• Partner directly with stakeholders in revenue, product, engineering, finance, and operations to gather requirements, map existing workflows, and identify high‑leverage opportunities for AI.
• Build end‑to‑end solutions — from scoping and architecture through implementation and deployment. This team ships, it doesn’t hand off specs.
• Work with AI APIs and platforms (Anthropic/Claude, AWS Bedrock, and others) to build agentic systems, automation pipelines, and intelligent tooling.
• Operate across a messy, heterogeneous environment — AWS infrastructure, Salesforce, internal services — without waiting for everything to be clean before you start building.
• Help shape the technical strategy and standards for AI Solutions as a function.

Must‑haves:

• 8+ years of relevant software engineering experience (no degree required; equivalent experience is fully accepted).
• Strong software engineering fundamentals — you’ve built and shipped production systems, not just prototypes.
• Proficiency in Python as the primary language for this work; comfort with additional languages is a plus.
• Experience designing APIs, services, and data pipelines. You think in systems, not scripts.
• AWS fluency — you’re comfortable working within AWS infrastructure and services.
• Hands‑on experience building with LLM APIs, agent frameworks, or AI‑powered applications that ran in production or were used by real people.
• Ability to operate with high autonomy. You’ll scope your own work, make architectural decisions, and own outcomes.
• Willingness to work across the full stack of a business — including systems like Salesforce that aren’t glamorous but are where the high‑impact problems live.

Nice‑to‑haves:

• Experience with workflow orchestration or automation at scale.
• Familiarity with Salesforce APIs and integration patterns (not Salesforce administration).
• Background in recommendations, search, data science, or ML engineering.
• Experience working cross‑functionally with non‑technical stakeholders.

Position Pay Range: $172,000 — $216,000 USD per year.

We reward our Gurus’ curiosity and passion with best‑in‑class benefits and compensation, including equity for all employees, robust time‑off policies, and a flexible hybrid model. Thoughtful perks such as daily free lunch, a new‑car discount, meditation and fitness apps, and commuting cost coverage help our people create space for what matters most in their personal and professional lives.

Car Gurus strives to be a place where people can bring the ultimate expression of themselves and their potential. 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 our recruiter if you require accommodations to participate in our hiring process due to a disability so we can provide the appropriate support. #LI-Hybrid