Software Engineer, LLM Platform

About Carvana

At Carvana, we’re changing the way people buy and sell cars. With an ambitious vision and a fundamentally different approach designed to be fun, fast, and fair, Carvana became the fastest-growing automotive retailer in history. We expanded nationally, went public on the New York Stock Exchange, sold our 1 millionth car, and reached the Fortune 500, all in just eight years. 

Today, with 4 million retail customers and counting, Carvana is both the fastest-growing and the most profitable public automotive retailer, and we’re just getting started. We continue to raise the bar for our customers as we tackle the enormous opportunity still ahead in the largest consumer vertical.  

Working here means being part of a team that embraces change, celebrates creative problem solving, and always strives to be better. At Carvana, you’ll have the opportunity to take on meaningful challenges, learn quickly, and help shape the future of automotive retail. If you’re driven to grow and make an impact as part of a collaborative team, you’ll fit right in. Learn more about what it’s like to work here from the people that already do. 

This is a fully on-site position, Monday through Friday, at our corporate HQ in Tempe, Arizona.

About the team and position

The LLM Platform team sits at the center of Carvana’s AI transformation. We build and operate the core infrastructure powering conversational experiences, agentic workflows, and AI-augmented internal tools used across the company. As an Engineer you will design and build the foundational infrastructure that powers AI-driven customer interactions and internal workflows across Carvana. Your work will define how large language models, agentic systems, and distributed services operate at scale across our platform, supporting millions of customer conversations and critical business operations.

You will own architecture, lead complex technical initiatives, and help shape the evolution of AI-native systems across the organization. This role offers the opportunity to influence platform direction, solve deeply technical distributed systems challenges, and build production AI systems with real-world impact.

This is a highly visible role with significant ownership and the ability to influence both technical strategy and business outcomes.

Our platform enables:

• Customer-facing conversational experiences across chat, voice, SMS, and email
• AI agents that automate workflows and augment internal teams
• Distributed systems that support high-volume, real-time messaging and decision-making
• Scalable model integration, orchestration, and evaluation pipelines

We operate a modern, polyglot technology stack including:

• Backend services in C# / .NET, Python, and Scala
• Frontend applications in TypeScript and React
• Kubernetes-based containerized infrastructure
• PostgreSQL and Azure Cosmos DB data stores
• Distributed messaging systems and event-driven architectures
• Cloud infrastructure and AI services on Microsoft Azure

Engineers on this team work across system boundaries, owning problems end-to-end and shaping platform architecture as we scale.

What you’ll be doing

Architecture and System Design

• Design, build, and evolve distributed systems supporting conversational AI, LLM integrations, and agent orchestration
• Define and implement scalable, reliable backend architectures across a polyglot stack (C# / .NET, Python, Scala)
• Identify and address system scalability, performance, and reliability challenges
• Lead technical design reviews and influence architectural direction

Platform and Infrastructure Development

• Build and operate services deployed on Kubernetes, improving deployment automation, observability, and reliability
• Design and optimize relational and NoSQL data models across PostgreSQL and Azure Cosmos DB
• Develop and integrate messaging, event-driven, and asynchronous processing systems
• Improve CI/CD pipelines, system monitoring, and operational tooling
• Develop TypeScript/React frontends supporting customer-facing and internal tooling experiences

Product and Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product, Data Science, and AI teams to deliver new platform capabilities
• Help translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions
• Contribute to roadmap planning and technical strategy

Engineering Leadership

• Mentor engineers and contribute to technical growth across the team
• Establish and promote engineering best practices for reliability, scalability, and maintainability
• Drive improvements in code quality, testing, and development processes

AI Platform Innovation

• Build systems supporting LLM integration, orchestration, and evaluation
• Evaluate emerging tools, frameworks, and technologies in the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem
• Help define how AI systems are integrated and scaled across the platform

What you should have/know

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Strong experience designing and building distributed systems in production environments
• Proficiency in at least one backend programming language such as C#, Python, Java, or Scala
• Experience building and operating cloud-native services using containerized infrastructure (Kubernetes, Docker, or equivalent)
• Experience designing and working with relational and/or NoSQL databases
• Experience building service-oriented architectures using REST, GraphQL, or gRPC
• Experience working with messaging systems such as Kafka, Service Bus, or RabbitMQ
• Strong software engineering fundamentals including system design, testing, and debugging
• Experience building or operating LLM-powered systems or AI-driven applications
• Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools such as Claude, Codex, or GitHub Copilot as part of a software development workflow
• Ability to lead technical projects and work effectively across teams

It would be great if you also have

• Experience with agentic systems, orchestration frameworks, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
• Experience with cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS, or GCP
• Experience with frontend technologies such as TypeScript and React
• Experience designing high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems
• Experience improving developer infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, or platform tooling
• Experience mentoring engineers or contributing to technical leadership

What we’ll offer in return

• Full-Time position with a competitive salary and Carvana stock compensation.
• Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits.
• 401K with company match.
• A multitude of perks including student loan payments, discounts on vehicles, benefits for your pets, and much more.
• A great wellness program to keep you healthy and happy both physically and mentally.
• Access to opportunities to expand your skill set and share your knowledge with others across the organization.
• A company culture focused on high performance and bar-raising, with vast opportunity to learn and grow.

Other requirements

To be able to do your job at Carvana, there are some basic requirements we want to share with you.

• Must be able to read, write, speak and understand English.

Of course, we’ll make any reasonable accommodations for those with disabilities to perform the essential functions of their jobs. 

Legal stuff

Hiring is contingent on passing a complete background check. This role is eligible for visa sponsorship.

Carvana is an equal employment opportunity employer.  All applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, national origin, age, mental or physical disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.  Carvana also prohibits harassment of applicants or employees based on any of these protected categories.

Please note this job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.