Lead Software Engineer Jobs in Tennessee

Location: Hendersonville / Nashville, Tennessee
Schedule: Full-Time or Part-Time
Work Arrangement: Primarily Remote + Weekly In-Person Meeting
Experience Level: Junior to Mid-Level
Part-Time Compensation:
$25–$45/hour, depending on experience and ability
Full-Time Compensation: Salary based on experience

About the Opportunity

We are a growing automotive company operating an established automotive repair facility and used-vehicle dealership in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

We're looking for a technically minded developer who is excited about AI, software development and business automation and wants the opportunity to build real applications that will actually be used every day.

This position can be full-time or part-time. Most work can be performed remotely, but we would like the person to be located within reasonable driving distance of Hendersonville/Nashville so we can meet in person approximately once per week to review projects, understand business processes and plan what we're building next.

This could be an excellent opportunity for an early-career developer who wants more responsibility and hands-on experience than they might receive at a large company.

You don't need 10 years of experience.

You don't need to know every technology we use.

You do need to know how to build software, be comfortable figuring things out and be genuinely interested in what is happening with AI.

What You'll Work On

We are actively building technology across our businesses, including:

• Internal management dashboards
• AI-powered employee assistants
• API integrations between automotive software platforms
• Vehicle inventory and reconditioning tracking
• Customer communication automation
• AI-assisted vehicle evaluation and purchasing tools
• Browser extensions
• Reporting and analytics tools
• Internal knowledge and training assistants
• Applications that work with vehicle photos, videos and documents
• Automation of repetitive business processes

These aren't hypothetical projects. You'll be working with real employees, real business data and real operational problems.

What You'll Do

You'll work directly with company leadership to:

• Build and improve internal web applications
• Connect third-party software using APIs
• Build dashboards and reporting tools
• Integrate AI models such as OpenAI/ChatGPT and Claude into applications
• Automate repetitive workflows
• Work with databases and business data
• Build prototypes to test new ideas
• Turn successful prototypes into reliable applications
• Troubleshoot and improve existing applications
• Maintain projects through GitHub
• Deploy applications to the cloud
• Research new technologies and determine how we can use them
• Document what you build so other people can understand and maintain it

What We're Looking For

You should have a working understanding of software development and experience with some of the following:

• JavaScript / TypeScript
• Python
• React, Next.js or similar web-development frameworks
• REST APIs
• SQL / databases
• Git / GitHub
• Basic cloud deployment

You do not need to be an expert in all of them.

We're especially interested in someone who has experimented with or built projects using:

• OpenAI / ChatGPT APIs
• Claude / Anthropic APIs
• AI agents
• AI coding tools
• Automation platforms
• API integrations
• RAG / AI knowledge bases
• Image or document analysis using AI

Experience

Approximately 1–3 years of professional software-development experience is ideal, but we're flexible.

We will also consider:

• Recent computer science / software engineering graduates with strong projects
• College students with demonstrated development ability
• Self-taught developers with an impressive portfolio
• Developers who have built their own applications or SaaS projects
• Candidates with internship or freelance experience
• Candidates who have been heavily experimenting with modern AI development

What you can actually build matters more to us than the number of years on your résumé.

You Might Be a Great Fit If...

You're the person who enjoys figuring things out.

When you don't know how to do something, your first instinct is to research it, test it and get it working.

You probably have personal projects you've built simply because you wanted to see if you could.

You use modern AI development tools to make yourself more productive, but you also understand the fundamentals behind the software you're building.

You're comfortable being given a business problem without being handed detailed technical instructions.

For example:

"It takes too long to get vehicles through our reconditioning process. We have data in several different systems. Can we build something that shows us where every vehicle is and what's holding it up?"

We want someone who gets excited about figuring out how to solve that problem.

Work Schedule & Location

We're intentionally flexible about how this position is structured.

The role can be full-time or part-time.

For part-time candidates, compensation is $25–$45 per hour, depending on experience, technical ability and fit.

Most development work can be completed remotely and on a flexible schedule.

However, understanding the actual business is important when building software for it. We would therefore like to meet in person approximately once per week at our Hendersonville location.

These meetings will be used to review projects, demonstrate what's been built, understand employee workflows, identify new opportunities and establish priorities for the next development cycle.

Outside of these meetings, we're primarily interested in results rather than where you're sitting while you write code.

What This Position Is Not

This is not an IT/help-desk position.

It's also not simply a "prompt engineering" position.

You'll use AI extensively, but you'll also write code, work with APIs, databases, authentication and existing business systems.

Automotive Experience

Automotive experience is not required.

We'll teach you our industry, systems and business processes.

We're hiring you for your technical ability, curiosity and willingness to learn.

Why This Could Be a Great Early-Career Opportunity

At a large technology company, an early-career developer may spend years working on a small portion of a much larger system.

Here, you'll have the opportunity to work on entire projects:

Identify a problem design a solution build it deploy it watch employees use it improve it.

You'll work directly with company ownership and management and have substantial input into how our technology evolves.

As your capabilities grow, the position can grow with you.

How to Apply

Please send:

Personal projects absolutely count.

We're much more interested in seeing something you built than reading a long list of technologies on a résumé.