Software Engineer II

About the role

As a Software Engineer II at NextGear Capital, you will help build and evolve the systems, applications, and digital capabilities that power one of the automotive industry's leading inventory finance businesses. This role is ideal for an engineer who has moved beyond purely guided execution and is ready to take ownership of discrete features and system components while continuing to grow technical depth and business understanding.

You will work closely with product managers, architects, engineers, and business stakeholders to design, build, test, and deliver high-quality software that creates measurable value for customers and internal teams. AI-assisted software development is a foundational part of how we build products, and you will leverage modern AI tools and development practices throughout the software development lifecycle to accelerate delivery, improve quality, and enhance collaboration.

Success in this role requires both strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to thoughtfully apply AI-enabled workflows while maintaining ownership of design decisions, code quality, security, and overall solution outcomes. You'll contribute across the full stack, participate in technical design discussions, collaborate on product strategy, and help shape modern software engineering practices within a business investing in innovation, automation, and AI-driven transformation.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with AI agents and tools to build, test, and deploy software across the SDLC, providing proper contextual inputs to improve AI understanding and ownership of output quality.
• Contribute to prompt engineering experimentation and share tool usage insights with the team.
• Engage in design and development discussions, helping the team conceptualize desired outcomes from a software engineering perspective.
• Assist with feature/element estimation in terms of technical input, resources, time, and anticipated outcomes.
• Develop and implement unit and system tests for integral code paths, ensuring adherence to secure coding practices.
• Provide technical support, including troubleshooting and enhancement, for existing and new features within application and system structures.
• Use observability tools (logs, metrics, traces, dashboards) to monitor system health, diagnose issues, and validate that changes behave as expected in production.
• Document processes to capture best practices, applicable methodologies, and repeatability.
• Update team members, manager, product owners, and other key stakeholders on status, challenges, and concerns.
• Participate in code reviews, both giving and receiving feedback.
• Take ownership of assigned work and drive it to completion with minimal oversight, while staying closely engaged with teammates, raising blockers early, and pitching in on shared team goals.

Outcomes

• Working Software, Every Sprint: Produce working software each sprint that meets the definition of done, delivers expected value, and stays within constraints defined by engineering leadership.
• AI Fluency: Maintain effective AI-augmented workflows that measurably improve speed and quality. Actively share what works with the team.
• Quality Solutions: Deliver maintainable, testable, and performant software that leverages existing patterns and meets client needs, with solution complexity understood well enough to produce consistent, meaningful estimates.
• Craft Growth: Demonstrate measurable growth toward independent ownership of features and system elements.
• Plan Transparency: Ensure changes in direction that affect time, effort, cost, or scope are surfaced to the team and above quickly.
• Initiative: Identify opportunities for automation, improvement, or learning and act on them with minimal guidance.

Requirements

• Minimum Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in a related discipline and 2 years' experience in a related field. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as a master's degree and up to 2 years' experience; or 14 years' experience in a related field.
• AI-Augmented Mindset: Consistent, effective use of AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, etc.) across the SDLC. You provide strong context, iterate on outputs, and critically evaluate quality and correctness rather than accepting output as-is. Spec Driven Development (SDD) experience is a plus.
• Problem Solving: Sound analytical judgment. Troubleshoots and resolves moderately complex issues with limited guidance.
• Full Stack Proficiency: Working proficiency across the stack you support (e.g., a backend framework such as Java/Spring Boot, a frontend framework such as React, and SQL/relational data modeling), with depth in at least one layer.
• Version Control & Collaboration: Comfortable with Git workflows, branching strategies, and collaborative development practices.
• Observability: Working knowledge of logging, metrics, and monitoring tools (e.g., New Relic, dashboards, alerts) to understand system behavior and health.
• Communication: Able to clearly explain technical tradeoffs and status to teammates and non-technical stakeholders.

Pay

Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $89,400.00 - $134,000.00 per year. The base salary may vary within the anticipated range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. The position may also be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.

Benefits

• Flexible vacation policy with pay, as deemed consistent with duties and company needs.
• Seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year.
• Up to 160 hours of paid wellness time annually for personal or family wellness.
• Additional paid time off for bereavement, voting, jury duty, volunteer activities, military leave, and parental leave.