About this job

The Engineer II, ML & AI Engineering role at CarMax is responsible for building and operating scalable machine learning and AI capabilities across the organization. You will partner closely with Data Scientists to productionize models and develop reliable inference services, with a focus on testing, monitoring, scalability, and operational excellence. This role plays a key part in delivering resilient, high-performing AI and ML solutions that power critical business and customer experiences. 

We are looking for an engineer with a strong foundation in software and cloud engineering who is passionate about transforming machine learning and AI innovations into mission-critical, high-visibility capabilities that support CarMax’s iconic customer experience. 

Essential Responsibilities:  

• Build and maintain production machine learning capabilities spanning feature engineering, training, evaluation, deployment, and model inference supporting initiatives across the organization, with attention to latency, throughput, and cost 

• Design and build agentic AI systems, including tool use, orchestration, memory, and the evaluation harnesses and observability needed to run them reliably in production. 

• Own the operational health of production ML and agentic systems: monitoring and alerting for model performance, data drift, and prediction quality, plus on-call incident response end to end and the follow-through that prevents repeat failures 

• Collaborate with Data Scientists to translate experimental work into tested, maintainable, production-grade code. 

• Partner with engineering and product teams to turn machine learning models into mission-critical, high-visibility capabilities that support CarMax's iconic customer experience 

• Demonstrates a passion for Data Science and Machine Learning, continuously driving innovation and improvement in these domains. 

Minimum Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience 

• 2+ years of professional experience in software engineering, systems engineering, machine learning engineering, or AI engineering, including experience building, deploying, and supporting production applications in an enterprise environment. 

• Proficiency in a programming language such as Python, Java, or C#, and hands-on experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow 

• Working knowledge of distributed databases (e.g., DynamoDB, Cosmos DB), caching systems, and vector databases, with experience applying them to high-throughput, low-latency production workloads 

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to adapt messaging to technical and non-technical audiences 

• Experience on a fast-paced, highly collaborative agile team within a product-oriented organization 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Agentic development workflows: Comfortable using AI coding agents to plan, implement, test, and review software, along with sound judgment about where agent-generated work requires human verification 

• MLOps practices: experiment tracking, model registries, reproducible training, and CI/CD or automated retraining for ML (MLflow, Azure ML, SageMaker, Kubeflow, or equivalent) 

• Experience with model serving platforms and real-time inference (Azure ML endpoints, Databricks, SageMaker, or equivalent) 

• Experience designing or operating microservices and distributed architectures (containers, Kubernetes, service-to-service APIs) 

Work Location and Arrangement: This role can be based out of the CarMax Home Office in Richmond, VA and Associates will work onsite 4 days per week or this role can be based out of our Dallas Technology 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 250 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.