Distributed Systems Backend Engineer, Used Cars Tesla Motors, Inc. 168000 - 300000 USD paid holidays, flex time, 401(k) United States, California, Fremont Sep 25, 2026

What to Expect To support Tesla's rapid growth in new vehicle sales and used car operations, the Digital Experience team needs a senior distributed systems engineer to build the vehicle management platform that runs used vehicle operations at scale. This role will enable Tesla to meet the demands of used car operations, including third-party lease vehicle intake, high-volume trade-in intake, recertification, and automation with wholesale buyer and auction vendors. You will lead the technical design and delivery of backend systems that automate the end-to-end used vehicle lifecycle - from intake and inspection through recertification and sale via retail or wholesale channels - while keeping customer and operator experiences fast, reliable, and intuitive as Tesla continues to expand. This is a hands-on senior backend role. You will architect and operate high-throughput, fault-tolerant services, apply agentic AI to remove operational friction, and use AI coding agents as a regular part of how you design, implement, and ship. You will own systems from design through production and set the technical bar for how used vehicle operations scale. What You'll Do

Architect, build, and operate distributed backend services for the used vehicle lifecycle: trade-in intake, third-party lease returns, inspection and recertification, inventory, and retail/wholesale disposition

Design systems for high-volume, bursty traffic with clear SLAs for latency, throughput, durability, and recovery

Lead technical design for integrations with wholesale buyers, auction platforms, and other vendors, including reliable event processing, retries, idempotency, and reconciliation

Own service architecture: APIs, domain boundaries, data models, consistency tradeoffs, and how services fail and recover under load

Build event-driven systems and agentic AI workflows - including agentic loops for plan, act, observe, and correct - to automate used car operations and improve efficiency across intake, recertification, and disposition

Design and operate production infrastructure, including containers, Kubernetes, autoscaling, configuration, and capacity planning

Choose and evolve data stores for operational and search/analytics workloads, with attention to partitioning, indexing, and backpressure

Instrument services with metrics, logs, and traces; define SLOs; and build AI-based anomaly detection to surface intake failures, inventory drift, integration breakage, and traffic/performance outliers before they impact operations

Write high-quality, well-tested code with regular use of AI coding agents; drive design and code reviews; mentor engineers on distributed systems and AI-assisted engineering practice

Partner with Product, Sales, Fleet, Service, Finance, and engineering teams; communicate estimates, dependencies, and risks clearly What You'll Bring

Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Math, or equivalent evidence of exceptional ability

6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including substantial ownership of production backend systems at scale

Proven expertise designing, building, and operating distributed systems: microservices or SOA, concurrency, consistency, fault tolerance, and graceful degradation

Expert-level proficiency in at least one backend language used in large systems (Go, Java, Python, C#, or equivalent), including production debugging of complex runtime issues

Deep, hands-on experience with Kubernetes and containerized workloads, including deployment, scaling, resource management, and production operations

Experience operating high-traffic or high-throughput systems, including load, queueing, rate limiting, caching, and performance profiling

Strong data layer experience: relational databases (e.g. MySQL/PostgreSQL) plus at least one of Redis, Kafka/event streaming, or OpenSearch/Elasticsearch

Practical experience building agentic AI workflows to improve operational efficiency, including knowledge of the agentic loop (plan, tool use, observation, retry/correction) and grounding agents in reliable backend systems

Experience building AI-based anomaly detection on production signals (metrics, logs, events, or operational data), and daily use of AI coding agents to accelerate design, implementation, review, and debugging

Clear communication and high agency; automotive, remarketing, fleet, logistics, or other high-volume physical-goods operations experience is a plus

Benefits Along with competitive pay, as a full-time Tesla employee, you are eligible for the following benefits at day 1 of hire: Medical plans > plan options with $0 payroll deduction

Family-building, fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits

Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plans, both have options with a $0 paycheck contribution

Company Paid (Health Savings Accounts) HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High-Deductible medical plan with HSA

Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)

401(k) with employer match, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, and other financial benefits

Company paid Basic Life, AD&D

Short-term and long-term disability insurance (90 day waiting period)

Employee Assistance Program

Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions, Accrued hours for Hourly positions), and Paid Holidays

Back-up childcare and parenting support resources

Voluntary benefits to include: critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft & legal services, and pet insurance

Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs

Tesla Babies program

Commuter benefits

Employee discounts and perks program

Expected Compensation

$168,000 - $300,000/annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefits Pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements dependent on the position offered. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.