Want to know if this job is worth applying to?
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Hybrid
Be essential at Cars Commerce
At Cars Commerce, we’re fanatical about simplifying everything about car buying and selling. We do right by our customers and consumers to better connect the industry with simplified and tierless technology to enhance, measure and drive local automotive retail. Whether through our No.1 most recognized marketplace, Cars.com, our industry-leading digital experience, Dealer Inspire, our trade and appraisal technology, AccuTrade, our reputation-based digital wholesale auction marketplace, Dealerclub, or our new Cars Commerce Media Network, Cars Commerce is essential for success in the automotive industry.
No one ever travels alone here: at its core, Cars Commerce is collaboration. In fact, it’s built into the very fabric of our shared values. We like to say we Rise Together – putting people at the center of what we do, from consumer to customer to community. Life at Cars Commerce makes it easy when we share the ethos to be Open to All, encouraging open-minded communication because we know diverse thinking yields better outcomes. But critical to our success is Caring to Challenge and Taking Ownership, fueling a competitive spirit in a respectful environment where we think about tomorrow but act today. At our foundation, we have integrity, Doing the Right Thing, even when it’s hard. It’s our shared commitment to these values that makes Cars Commerce a place where growth becomes not only possible, but downright unavoidable.
But don't take our word for it. We are proud to be named one of Built In's 2026 Best Places to Work in Chicago and across the U.S. Ready to make your mark? Join a team that's driving real change in the automotive industry.
About the Role
[Remote and may require onsite interviews]
Join us in shaping a future of Automotive Commerce. Cars Commerce builds solutions for automotive dealerships, manufacturers, and consumers. Our driving force is to deliver a single platform that simplifies everything about buying and selling cars.
Our Data and AI Platform team is embarking on a transformational journey, building innovative and integrated services that redefine how we deliver value to our customers and consumers alike. This is a rare opportunity to join a data-first company at a genuine inflection point — with strong leadership, a clear vision, and an enormous amount of meaningful work to be done. For a data professional who wants to build, create, and make a real impact — this is the place and the moment.
About You:
As a ‘BI Analyst - Semantic Layer’ you will play the role of a Semantic Layer Engineer on our BI (Business Intelligence)Team. You will work daily with Enterprise Analytics, domain business stakeholders across multiple platforms (Marketplace - cars.com and Dealer Inspire), and the Data Engineering team who owns the infrastructure your definitions run on. This is a small but high-visibility team where the definitions you certify will be used company-wide almost immediately. This is an exceptional opportunity to shape the future of our platforms and drive meaningful change at scale, making a lasting impact within the automotive industry.
We're on a mission to build something truly foundational at Cars Commerce. This isn't a maintenance role — this is a build-from-the-ground-up, make-your-mark opportunity! We are standing up Cars Commerce's first governed semantic/metrics layer and activating Atlan, its data catalog. The Semantic Layer Engineer owns the business content that lives on top of that platform: what every metric, dimension, and glossary term actually means, who's accountable for it, and making sure that meaning stays consistent everywhere it shows up — in the semantic layer, in our enterprise reporting tool, and in Atlan's glossary. The Data Engineering team owns the infrastructure these tools run on; you own the definitions, the governance process, and the relationships with the business that make those definitions trustworthy.
This is a hands-on technical role, not a policy-writing role. You will personally author and maintain metric and dimension definitions as code in whichever semantic layer — not hand specifications to someone else to implement. At the same time, you will be spending time with business stakeholders: defining what “active dealer” or a given KPI actually means, reconciling competing definitions across departments, and building the literacy so people trust and use the governed numbers instead of rebuilding their own version in a spreadsheet.
Cars Commerce also has meaningful unmanaged taxonomy debt in core product data. You'll apply the same definition and hierarchy discipline you bring to metrics to help establish canonical taxonomy content for this kind of categorical data, partnering with the teams who own execution and productionization outside the semantic layer itself. Real ownership. Real impact.
Why You'll Be Excited About This Role
This opportunity enables you to...
Author and maintain semantic layer definitions, hands-on. Write and maintain the actual metric, dimension, and hierarchy definitions as code (SQL/YAML or the modeling language of whichever semantic layer tool is adopted) — not specifications for someone else to build.
Run the metric definition lifecycle. Own the end-to-end process — request, draft, review, certification, publication, versioned change control, and deprecation — for every governed metric, working directly with business stakeholders as co-authors of what the metric means.
Own the Atlan glossary content. Maintain business definitions, context, and ownership tagging for glossary terms (content ownership; platform administration of Atlan itself sits with the Analytics Engineer on Data Engineering).
Keep definitions in sync across tools. Audit and reconcile drift so that a given metric or term means the same thing in the semantic layer, in the enterprise reporting tool, and in the Atlan glossary — and enforce the rule that a metric is not “real” until it's certified in one place and referenced everywhere else.
Partner directly with business teams. Work with department heads and analysts across the business to define new metrics, resolve disagreements about what a metric means, and keep existing definitions current as the business changes.
Drive data literacy. Run office hours, onboarding sessions, and enablement content so that using governed, certified data is the easy default rather than an extra step people route around.
Own taxonomy definition content. Define canonical hierarchy and rollup logic for high-fragmentation categorical data (e.g., product/vehicle attributes), in partnership with the engineering and product teams who own execution.
Publish the governance and adoption scorecard. Report on governed-metric coverage of query volume, duplication retired, certified-vs-uncertified usage trends, and open definitional disputes.
We're Excited About You Because…
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years of experience in analytics engineering, business intelligence, or data governance, with genuine hands-on SQL experience — this is not a policy-only or cataloging-only role.
Direct, hands-on experience authoring and maintaining models in a semantic layer or metrics layer tool — dbt Semantic Layer/MetricFlow, LookML (Looker), Cube, Omni, AtScale, or comparable. You must be comfortable working in the actual model code, not just writing specifications.
Strong dimensional modeling fundamentals — star schema design, slowly changing dimensions, and an understanding of how join fan-out silently corrupts aggregate results.
Experience running a metric or glossary governance process with real business stakeholders outside the data team — not just internal data-team documentation.
Experience with a data catalog tool for glossary and business-term content management — Atlan, Collibra, Alation, or similar.
Excellent stakeholder management, facilitation, and training/enablement skills — comfortable adjudicating disagreements between business stakeholders and running literacy programs for non-technical audiences.
Bonus:
Experience with Tableau or another enterprise BI tool as a content/definition owner, not just an administrator.
Experience building canonical taxonomies or classification systems from messy or inconsistent source data.
Experience partnering directly with marketing, sales, or product stakeholders on cross-departmental KPI alignment.
Experience building a data governance or semantic layer program from zero to one, rather than only maintaining an existing mature program.
In the spirit of pay transparency, we are excited to share the base salary range for this position. In addition to base salary, some roles are eligible for our bonus and/or equity programs, depending on level and role. Regular full-time positions are eligible for our comprehensive benefits package. If you are hired at Cars Commerce, your final base salary compensation will be determined based on factors such as skills and/or experience. If the salary range is close to what you're seeking, then we encourage you to apply and learn more about the total compensation package for this position.Salary Range$104,100.00-130,150.00
Our Comprehensive Benefits Package includes:
Medical, Dental & Vision Healthcare Plans
New Hire Stipend for Home Office Set-Up
Generous PTO
Paid Holidays, Floating Holiday, Volunteer Day, Recharge Day
Learn more about our Benefits, Perks, & Culture on our LinkedIn Life Pages!
For US-based Positions: Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. Please note that we are unable to sponsor employment visas at this time.
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Applicants: Click here to review our Privacy Policy for Applicants. For current employees, please click here to review our California Privacy Policy for Employees.