Software Engineer, Backend Developer, AI Engineer (Applied​/Software)

Position: Software Engineer I
As part of Cox Automotive's Consumer & Marketing Solutions Portfolio, our Demand Side Platform team builds real-time bidding and programmatic advertising infrastructure that powers vehicle marketing  operate within a SAFe Agile Release Train, delivering value through well-defined Value Streams that connect product capabilities to measurable business outcomes.

We are looking for a Software Engineer I who is eager to learn, grow, and contribute to a high-impact team from day one. This is an early-career role designed for engineers who bring foundational technical skills, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine enthusiasm for modern software development practices - including the responsible use of AI-assisted development tools.

In this role, you will work alongside experienced engineers to understand business requirements, develop your technical craft, and contribute to building scalable, resilient, and well-tested systems. You will begin learning how to leverage AI tools such as Git Hub Copilot, Claude Code, and MCP-based workflows to support coding, testing, and documentation tasks - always under the guidance of senior team members and with a focus on validating and taking ownership of all AI-generated output.

Our Team

Cox Automotive's Advertising & Marketing teams are spread across Atlanta, GA, Austin, TX, and Burlington, VT. Our Demand Side Platform team operates at the intersection of high-throughput data systems, real-time decisioning, and cloud infrastructure. We are a collaborative team that values engineering craft, continuous improvement, and building systems that scale. If you are excited to grow your skills in a real-world, production engineering environment where AI tooling is a first-class part of the workflow - you'll fit right in.

Primary Duties & Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to coding tasks by writing unit and system tests, participating in pair programming, and using AI tools to support code generation, documentation, and troubleshooting - always reviewing output for accuracy, security, and alignment with engineering standards.
• Work within your team to understand and break down epics, features, and stories, building familiarity with how requirements are shaped using AI for problem and solution discovery.
• Learn and apply spec-driven development (SDD) practices by participating in specification reviews and contributing to well-structured specs before implementation begins.
• Develop foundational skills across the team's core technology stack - including Java, Type Script, and Python - with a focus on writing clean, readable, and maintainable code.
• Build familiarity with AWS cloud services and begin learning infrastructure-as-code concepts (Terraform, AWS CDK) under the guidance of senior engineers.
• Gain exposure to relational and non-relational data stores (SQL/No
  
  SQL) and in-memory caching concepts (Redis/Valkey) as part of contributing to data-driven services.
• Learn to troubleshoot issues using traditional debugging techniques and, progressively, AI-assisted root-cause exploration to diagnose and resolve problems.
• Support platform modernization efforts by assisting with legacy code updates and migration tasks, using AI tools to understand older patterns and propose alternatives.
• Learn and apply secure coding practices and participate in AI-assisted code analysis to identify vulnerabilities or quality concerns.
• Document processes, patterns, and best practices, leveraging AI tools appropriately to produce clear and consistent documentation.
• Share observations and lessons learned from AI-assisted workflows to help refine team practices.
• Communicate status, challenges, and dependencies clearly to teammates, engineering managers, and product stakeholders

Required Experience, Knowledge & Skills

• Applicants must currently be authorized to work in the United States for any employer without current or future sponsorship. No OPT, CPT, STEM/OPT or visa sponsorship now or in the future.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related discipline. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as 4 years' experience in a related field.
• Foundational programming skills…