Software Engineer I

As part of Cox Automotive's Advertising & Marketing Release Train, our engineering teams build the products and platforms that help automotive dealers and OEMs plan, execute, and optimize their advertising - from intelligent budget recommendations and automated campaign management to video production pipelines, third-party ad integrations, and marketing analytics. We operate within a SAFe Agile framework and deliver value through well-defined Value Streams that connect engineering 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 GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and MCP-based workflows to support coding, testing, and documentation tasks - 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 release train is home to multiple product engineering teams working across a broad surface area - full-stack web applications, serverless APIs, data pipelines, AI-driven recommendation systems, and advertising automation services - all running on modern cloud infrastructure
Across our teams, we value engineering craft, continuous improvement, and spec-driven development as a growing practice for building well-defined, testable systems. If you are excited to grow your skills in a real-world production environment where collaboration, intentional design, and responsible AI adoption are all part of how we work - you will fit right in
Primary Duties & Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to full-stack feature development across frontend UIs and backend APIs and services, writing clean, readable, and well-tested code under the guidance of senior engineers
• Write unit and integration tests, participate in pair programming, and use 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 your team's core technology stack, applying object-oriented design principles to write modular, maintainable, and extensible code.
• Build familiarity with cloud services and begin learning infrastructure-as-code concepts under the guidance of senior engineers.
• Gain exposure to relational and non-relational data stores as part of contributing to data-driven services.
• Learn to troubleshoot issues using traditional debugging techniques and, progressively, AI-assisted root-cause exploration - including supporting production systems through monitoring, alerting, and incident response alongside senior engineers.
• 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.
• Proficiency in object-oriented programming in at least one modern language (e.g., Java, Python, C#, or similar).
• Good understanding of OOP principles - encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism - and how they apply to writing clean, maintainable, and extensible code.
• Basic understanding of software development concepts including version control, testing, debugging, and the software development lifecycle.
• Eagerness to learn and grow across a broad technology stack including cloud platforms, data stores, and infrastructure tooling.
• Openness to learning and responsibly adopting AI-assisted development tools (such as, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and MCP-based workflows) as part of everyday engineering practice.
• Familiarity with or willingness to learn Agile and/or Value Stream-based delivery models.
• Strong communication and teamwork skills with a willingness to take guidance and grow within a collaborative engineering environment.
• Intellectual curiosity, a growth mindset, and a commitment to continuous learning and improvement.

Preferred Qualifications

• Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Familiarity with web technologies including TypeScript or JavaScript, or experience with a frontend framework such as React or Angular.
• Coursework or project experience with relational or non-relational databases, caching, or distributed systems concepts.
• Basic understanding of CI/CD pipelines, containerization, or infrastructure-as-code concepts.
• Familiarity with testing frameworks or experience writing unit and integration tests.
• Prior internship or professional experience contributing to a production codebase in a team environment.
• Demonstrated ability to learn new technologies quickly through personal projects, open-source contributions, or academic work.

USD 74,000.00 - 111,000.00 per year
Compensation:
Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $74,000.00 - $111,000.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.
Benefits:
The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.
Applicants must currently be authorized to work in the United States for any employer without current or future sponsorship.
EOE, including disability/vets