samsullivan
Cardog turns raw vehicle data into facts you can check: VIN decode, market price, recalls, and what the car's own modules report. Insurers, dealers, manufacturers and the public bodies that register vehicles all use it. We're a small team and every engineer owns a whole area.
Data - Data Platform Engineer (Remote). Own the datasets: government files, manufacturer filings, dealer listings, signals from the vehicle. Decide which source wins when two disagree, and be able to prove it. SQL first, entity resolution, tens of millions of rows. Postgres, TypeScript, Workers, R2. - VIN Decode Engineer (Remote). Own decode accuracy. Read manufacturer filings line by line, write the patterns, and test them against millions of real VINs. For people who are obsessive about correctness. TypeScript, Postgres.
Design - Design Engineer (Remote). Own the component library and the screens built on it. Dense data, and making uncertain or missing values look uncertain. You design in the browser and you merge it yourself. React, Next.js, Tailwind. - Founding Engineer, Dealer Platform (Toronto / Remote). First engineer on software for dealer groups. Time in stores, then ship it the same week. Strong Postgres, multi-tenant.
Business - Account Executive (Toronto / Remote). Enterprise and public-sector sales cycles measured in quarters. Run technical first calls alone and pull your own numbers in SQL. - Policy & Standards Lead (Ontario). Represent us in the consultations and standards bodies writing the rules for vehicle data. Closer to counsel than comms.
Field - Hardware Engineer, Vehicle Interface (Toronto). Own the diagnostic-port device: board, firmware, enclosure, from bench to a unit on a dealer lot. C or Rust, CAN at the frame level, UDS/ISO-TP against real cars. - Forward Deployed Engineer (Ontario). Take named accounts from the first meeting to a running system. TypeScript, SQL, and some time under dashboards.
Apply on the page (each role takes applications in place) or write to [email protected].
Digital verification is going to matter a lot more for objects we own rather than the objects that proxy for that (currently the main function of an ID). Identity fraud is only problematic because ownership is tied to a loose record of SIN/DL.
Having a physical medium represent ownership just shifts the burden to the state and allows for social engineering and fraud to persist.
Its only job is to detect harsh acceleration and brake events. Probably being sold to your insurer.
Facts about the car: VIN, spec, recall status, odometer. Attested by someone other than the owner. Outlives every owner and the owner is the last to have it, if at all.
Facts about the driver: speed, location, timestamp. Thats what GM sold, the fix is to not collect it but OEMs seem to take 'anonymization' approach.
The DRIVER act treats both as the same which is why it fails to fix anything. The second needs a ban. The first needs the opposite - especially as we take the driver out of the vehicle - an authoritative record of the vehicle. How do we expect AVs to have adoption when the only safety certification is the company's press release?
You could probably find some interesting info if you send out some privacy requests through the chain. LexisNexis and Verisk are consumer reporting agencies, so they have to provide you a disclosure on request. Start there.
We're the system of record for the Canadian vehicle: raw automotive data turned into facts that can be checked. Our open-source VIN decoder sits underneath a government vehicle registry.
Some of what's interesting:
- A government registry, a manufacturer's own filing, a listing site and an insurance record will describe the same truck four different ways, and nothing in any of those files says they're the same truck. Reconciling that, for every vehicle in the country, in a way that holds up when a regulator asks how you know, is most of the data work.
- Seventeen characters on a door frame encode manufacturer, plant, model year and build attributes — badly, inconsistently, and differently per manufacturer. Public reference data covers some of it. The rest gets worked out from filings, recall documents, and patterns inferred across millions of vehicles.
- We read vehicles directly over OBD-II now. Forty modules answered on a recent Hyundai, each reporting its own part number and installed software version. Nothing downstream of the VIN moves when a module is reflashed, so no registration, history report or dealer system knows what software is actually in a car.
Hiring: VIN Decode Engineer, Data Platform Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, Founding Engineer (dealer platform). TypeScript, Postgres, Cloudflare Workers.
Full descriptions and apply: https://cardog.app/careers
Looking for: Automotive experience, Full-Stack, AI/ML, Data Engineers (public-sector/govtech experience a plus)
Stack: React Native/Expo, Next.js, Hono, Cloudflare Workers, PostgreSQL, TypeScript everywhere
Looking for: Automotive experience, Full-Stack, AI/ML, Data Engineers
Stack: React Native/Expo, Next.js, Hono, Cloudflare Workers, PostgreSQL, TypeScript everywhere
AI-powered automotive platform — we're building the infrastructure layer for vehicle data, from VIN decoding to market intelligence.
Looking for: iOS/Mobile, Full-Stack, AI/ML, Data Engineers
Stack: React Native/Expo, Next.js, Hono, Cloudflare Workers, PostgreSQL, TypeScript everywhere
We build automotive software. We work with dealerships on ad-hoc projects, websites, and pricing tools. We also run consumer facing products - a web app for vehicle shopping, research and market data, and a mobile app.
Right now we're building EV battery health diagnostics - connecting to a car's BMS over CAN bus, pulling cell voltages and state of health, generating reports. Mix of hardware and software.
Small company with real clients and real revenue. One engineer. Looking for a second who wants to own things e2e.
hello[at]cardog{dot}app
Buying, researching and analyzing automotive data is broken. Trying to fix that bit by bit
Looking at actual market data, the spread on used EVs is wild - a 2022 Tesla Model S ranges from $57 to $112k depending on trim/condition (https://cardog.app/tools/valuation/tesla/model_s/2022). That's a $60k spread on the same year vehicle. Compare that to ICE vehicles where the range is typically much tighter.
When buyers can't confidently price an asset, they discount heavily. The depreciation problem might actually be a data problem - we just don't have the standardized battery health reporting and historical comps that exist for ICE vehicles yet.
From Sears to Surveillance
Show HN: Cardog Reports
Hi everyone, we built a vehicle history report offering that I wanted to share and get some feedback on.It collects data from over 1,200 sources across North America and compiles to a single clean report like Carfax and Autocheck.We would really value any feedback from anyone currently in the researching/buying/selling phase - what pieces of information are / were essential in your recent...
We Built a Vehicle History Report from Scratch
Show HN: Check Any Car's Recalls
https://cardog.app/tools/recalls
Built a tool to help people check for recalls on their vehicles. Uses both transport canada and nhtsa data updated daily.
VIN: The 17-character code that runs the automotive world
Show HN: I built the fastest VIN decoder
https://github.com/cardog-ai/corgi
Decodes any VIN in ~20ms with zero network calls. I compressed the entire NHTSA vehicle database into a 21MB SQLite file that runs completely offline.No API keys, no rate limits, no servers. Just download once and decode forever. Works in browsers, Node.js, Cloudflare Workers - anywhere SQLite runs.Would love any feedback and to answer any questions about the implementation.
we're going to learn why companies were invented the hard way this decade aren't we
Trying to make car research, buying and ownership easy