Principal Software Engineer

8116 - Midtown Office - 2220 W. Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia, 23220CarMax, the way your career should be! 

About this job

At CarMax, we are industry disruptors. At the heart of our innovation is new digital products. Working on many different aspects of the customer experience, our Principal Engineers research and discover new opportunities and shape products to fulfill them. From inception to completion, you will develop tools and technology, learning quickly from our spirit of experimentation. You will have a direct impact on improving the performance of our business and ensuring customers can buy the vehicles they want in a way that is right for them!

About the Team

The Developer Experience team is the internal platform and enablement engine for CarMax Technology. Our mission is to make every engineer at CarMax faster, more confident, and better equipped — through the tools, platforms, and practices they use every day. We own the developer portal, golden path frameworks, CI/CD infrastructure, and the AI-assisted development tooling that is reshaping how software gets built here. We sit at the intersection of platform engineering and developer advocacy, and we treat the developer as our customer.

What You Will Do – Essential Responsibilities

• Design, build, and evolve the developer platform — including the developer portal, golden path templates, and onboarding frameworks — that serve as the foundation for how CarMax engineers build, run, and ship software.
• Lead the engineering implementation of AI-enabled development tooling, including GitHub Copilot and agentic AI workflows, translating emerging capabilities into practical, measurable productivity improvements for engineering teams.
• Architect and maintain CI/CD pipeline infrastructure and delivery automation tooling, ensuring that CarMax’s software delivery systems are fast, reliable, and observable end to end.
• Collaborate with product management, systems architecture, and platform teams to develop experimental solutions and drive them from concept to production within an agile environment.
• Establish and champion engineering best practices — coding standards, reusable libraries, API patterns, and infrastructure as code — across the Developer Experience portfolio.
• Mentor engineers across the team and across the broader organization, providing hands-on guidance on architecture decisions, implementation approaches, and AI tool adoption.
• Continuously evaluate emerging trends in AI, developer tooling, and platform engineering to ensure CarMax’s developer practices remain at the forefront of industry innovation.
• Market your innovative ideas internally and evolve them through feedback, driving adoption across engineering communities of practice.

Purpose of the Role

Principal Engineers within the Developer Experience team sit at the heart of how CarMax builds software. They are hands-on technical leaders who don’t just write excellent code — they shape the platforms and practices that multiply the effectiveness of every engineer in the organization. Recognized as technical authorities and platform advocates, they are responsible for building and evolving the systems that underpin developer productivity: the CI/CD infrastructure, developer portals, golden path frameworks, and AI-enabled tooling that define how CarMax engineers work every day.

It takes a genuine passion for developer experience to build the tools that make other engineers faster. Working collaboratively as part of the Engineering Experience group, you will engage in the full development lifecycle: understanding the real challenges developers face, designing platform solutions at scale, integrating emerging AI capabilities into the SDLC, and delivering outcomes that are measurable and durable. You balance developer needs with platform reliability and know how to ship technical solutions that compound in value over time. Creative, curious, and technically deep — you never stop learning and thrive in the space where platform engineering meets AI innovation.

Qualifications and Requirements

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent alternative education, skills, and/or practical experience is required.

• 7+ years of experience with .NET Core/C#/Microsoft Azure offerings.
• Strong teamwork and leadership skills, ability to learn quickly, excellent written and spoken communication required.
• Demonstrated ability or strong interest in technical leadership and mentoring engineers.
• Experience working within a product or platform organization using Agile and DevOps methodologies.

Experience in the Following Required

AI & Developer Tooling

• AI/ML integration into the SDLC
• GitHub Copilot and AI-assisted development
• Agentic AI workflows and prompt engineering
• AI-based developer tooling evaluation and adoption

Platform & DevOps

• GitHub and Git-based workflows (branching, PRs, code reviews)
• Azure DevOps / Azure Boards
• CI/CD pipeline design and implementation
• Developer portals and golden path frameworks
• Infrastructure as Code (ARM/Bicep) and evolving IaC practices in agentic development workflows
• Observability platforms and telemetry pipelines

Backend & Cloud

• Advanced .NET / C# application development
• Microsoft Azure (PaaS, IaaS, CaaS)
• RESTful API design and implementation
• Distributed systems and microservices architecture
• Security and authentication/authorization patterns

Experience in the Following Preferred

• Experience in a Lead Engineer or technical leadership role
• Experience mentoring and developing other engineers
• Familiarity with container technologies (Kubernetes, Docker) — growing relevance as platform practices evolve
• API Gateway technologies and APIM patterns
• AI-driven observability and reliability tooling
• Experience working within a product organization
• Experience evaluating and adopting emerging AI capabilities

Work Location and Arrangement:

• Midtown: This role will be based out of the CarMax Midtown Innovation Center (Richmond, VA) and associates will work onsite 5 days per week
• Plano: This role will be based out of the CarMax Dallas Tech Hub (Plano, TX) and associates will work onsite 2 days per week

Work Authorization: Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Sponsorship will not be considered for this specific role.

About CarMax

CarMax disrupted the auto industry by delivering the honest, transparent and high-integrity experience customers want and deserve. This innovative thinking around the way cars are bought and sold has helped us become the nation’s largest retailer of used cars, with over 200 locations nationwide.

Our amazing team of more than 25,000 associates work together to deliver iconic customer experiences. Along the way, we help every associate grow their career and achieve their best, at work and in their community. We are recognized for our commitment to training and diversity and are one of the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

CarMax is committed to bringing together people from different backgrounds and perspectives, providing employees with a safe, welcoming, and inclusive work environment.

CarMax is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Upon an applicant's request, CarMax will consider reasonable accommodation to complete the CarMax Job Application.

For more details click Job Post.