Staff Software Engineer, Ads Data Platform

Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Instacart

We're transforming the grocery industry At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers. Instacart has become a lifeline for millions of people, and we’re building the team to help push our shopping cart forward. If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, come join our table. Instacart is a Flex First team There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work. Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their best work—whether it’s from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop—while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work. OVERVIEW Instacarts Data Infrastructure organization builds and operates the systems that power our company’s data ecosystem, including a modern open data lakehouse on Apache Iceberg, a multi-engine compute platform for stream and analytical workloads, and self-serve tooling that helps Product, Data Science, ML, Ads, Finance, and engineering teams move fast with data. We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Data Governance and Foundations Team. In this role, you’ll serve as a senior technical leader owning the architecture and delivery of our open lakehouse foundation, governance and access patterns, and multi-engine compute strategy—balancing today’s reliability with the next three to five years of scale, maturity, and cost efficiency. You’ll collaborate closely with engineering leadership and stakeholders across Data Science, ML Platform, Ads Infrastructure, Finance Engineering, Product Engineering, and Security. You’ll operate with a high degree of ownership in a fast-paced environment where architectural decisions have real technical and financial consequences. If you thrive on complex, high-scale challenges and roll-up-your-sleeves execution, this is a chance to shape the backbone of Instacart’s data platform. Our stack includes technologies such as Apache Iceberg, Apache Flink, Trino, ClickHouse, Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, Snowflake, Databricks, Confluent, Airflow, dbt, Delta Lake, Scala, Python, Postgres, and AWS. You’ll join a focused team of 7 engineers that values pragmatism, clarity, and impact. ABOUT THE JOB * Translate Instacart’s data strategy (e.g., monetization, federated access, real-time) into an actionable multi-year architecture roadmap; align with leadership while evolving the platform for scale, maturity, and cost efficiency. * Own the open lakehouse foundation: define and deliver unified table formats, storage governance, and a multi-engine compute portfolio (interactive, batch, streaming) that enables portability and prevents lock-in. * Drive real-time and streaming infrastructure for critical use cases (Ads, Fraud, ML): set deployment patterns, SLAs, and operational practices that balance performance, availability, and spend. * Pioneer AI-native data infrastructure engineering by applying LLM/AI tools to the platform lifecycle—accelerating development, automation, observability, and cost optimization—and partnering to embed AI-powered capabilities into the platform. * Elevate engineering excellence: lead architecture reviews, mentor senior/staff engineers, influence hiring, and clearly communicate complex trade-offs to both technical and executive audiences to ensure cross-org alignment. ABOUT YOU MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS * 10+ years of software engineering experience building and operating data infrastructure or distributed systems at production scale. * Hands-on expertise with modern data lakehouse architectures and open table formats (e.g., Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi) and with distributed query/compute engines (e.g., Trino, Spark, ClickHouse), including performance tuning and production reliability. * Experience with event-driven and streaming infrastructure (e.g., Kafka, Flink) for real-time pipelines and serving systems. * Proven ownership of major platform transitions or migrations (build vs. buy, migration design, risk management) delivered to production. * Ability to build cost/benefit and TCO models for infrastructure investments and to drive alignment via clear architecture docs and strategy memos across multiple teams and leadership levels. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS * Experience designing platform-level governance controls and familiarity with compliance frameworks (e.g., SOX, CPRA, GDPR). * FinOps experience optimizing data platform spend, including managing multi-million dollar infrastructure budgets and negotiating vendor contracts. * Deep SQL proficiency and strong skills in Python or Scala for systems-level development. * Experience with orchestration (e.g., Apache Airflow) and data transformation pipelines (e.g., dbt) in large-scale production environments. * Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience. #LI-Remote   Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work. This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location. Please review our Flex First remote work policy here. Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. Please read more about our benefits offerings here. For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below. CA, NY, CT, NJ $265,000—$279,500 USD WA $254,000—$268,000 USD OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI $243,000—$256,500 USD All other states $221,000—$233,000 USD

Staff Software Engineer, Home & Cross-Retailer Search

Instacart

We're transforming the grocery industry At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers. Instacart has become a lifeline for millions of people, and we’re building the team to help push our shopping cart forward. If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, come join our table. Instacart is a Flex First team There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work. Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their best work—whether it’s from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop—while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work. Overview Instacart’s Home & Cross-Retailer Search teams are responsible for how customers first discover where and what to shop: from the personalized Home experience to search across thousands of retailers and items. We own the systems that decide which retailers, items, and content to show, how fast they appear, and how well they match customer intent across platforms. As a Staff Software Engineer on the Home & Cross-Retailer Search team, you will sit at the intersection of retrieval, distributed systems, and machine learning building the infrastructure that determines what tens of millions of Instacart customers see, find, and buy every day. About the Job * Define and drive the multi-year technical vision for Home and Cross-Retailer Search infrastructure, spanning retrieval, ranking, indexing, and personalization at scale. * Own the architecture of Instacart's cross-retailer search platform, ensuring correctness, freshness, and low latency as catalog and query volume grows. * Own Home feed ranking and content strategy, retailer selection, and personalized recommendations driven by real-time and batch ML signals. * Partner with ML Platform and Applied Science to productionize ranking models and improve experimentation infrastructure - A/B testing, interleaving, and offline eval * Accelerate developer velocity across the sub-pillar: reduce time-to-production, build reusable components, and make it easy for product teams to experiment with minimal platform friction. * Set the technical bar through design reviews, reliability standards, latency budgets, and observability practices. * Lead major cross-org initiatives end-to-end, from scoping through rollout and post-launch ownership. * Represent the engineering perspective in product and business planning, translating ambiguous problems into well-scoped technical strategies with clear tradeoffs * Mentor and grow engineers across Home and XRS teams. We're looking for someone energized by operating at this intersection - comfortable making hard tradeoffs, and able to influence technical strategy across organizational boundaries. About You Minimum Qualifications * 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of leading large-scale distributed systems in production * Demonstrated experience as a technical lead or architect on cross-team, multi-quarter initiatives  driving alignment, making hard tradeoffs, and delivering results * Deep expertise in backend systems: high-throughput APIs, data pipelines, caching strategies, and storage systems. * Experience building or scaling search, recommendations, or feed-ranking systems at significant traffic volume * Strong command of system design principles: reliability, fault tolerance, observability, graceful degradation * Proficiency in one or more of: Ruby, Go, Python, Java, or similar backend languages; comfort across the stack to debug and contribute where needed * Strong communication skills - able to write crisp technical documents and drive alignment across engineering, product, and business stakeholders * BS/MS in Computer Science, a related field. Preferred Qualifications * Experience at a marketplace or e-commerce platform with complex catalog, inventory, or fulfillment constraints * Familiarity with ML serving infrastructure, feature stores, and online/offline evaluation frameworks * Experience with real-time data pipelines (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming) and search indexing at scale (Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch) * Track record of improving developer productivity and platform health: reducing p99 latency, improving cost efficiency and cutting incident rates. * Prior work on personalization systems using collaborative filtering, contextual bandits, or session-based signals #LI-Remote Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work. This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location. Please review our Flex First remote work policy here. Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. Please read more about our benefits offerings here. For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below. CA, NY, CT, NJ $265,000—$279,000 USD WA $254,000—$268,000 USD OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI $243,000—$256,000 USD All other states $221,000—$233,000 USD

Staff Software Engineer, Shopper Activation & Engagement

Instacart

We're transforming the grocery industry At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers. Instacart has become a lifeline for millions of people, and we’re building the team to help push our shopping cart forward. If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, come join our table. Instacart is a Flex First team There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work. Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their best work—whether it’s from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop—while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work. OVERVIEW Instacart’s Shopper Activation & Engagement team owns the complete shopper lifecycle—from activation and onboarding through engagement, earnings, quality and ratings, recognition, retention, and safety. Our mission is to help millions of shoppers get started, succeed, and thrive on our marketplace while ensuring compliance and operational excellence. We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to serve as the Activation Domain Tech Lead. In this role, you’ll define the technical strategy and architecture for critical shopper activation surfaces such as onboarding funnel optimization, waitlist management, supply levers, and compliance systems. You’ll partner closely with Product, Design, Data Science, Operations, Legal, Trust & Safety, and key onboarding vendors to deliver fast, safe, and scalable solutions. This is a high-impact role where your work directly influences shopper supply, marketplace efficiency, and our ability to scale sustainably while maintaining quality and regulatory standards. If you thrive in fast-moving, highly cross-functional environments and enjoy rolling up your sleeves to solve complex problems at scale, you’ll feel right at home here. We go far together, communicate with candor, and prioritize solutions where everyone can win. ABOUT THE JOB * Define and drive the end-to-end technical strategy and architecture for the activation domain, enabling rapid, safe delivery as the roadmap scales to support millions of shoppers. * Lead product strategy in partnership with Product and Design across onboarding funnel optimization, waitlist management, incentives, and supply levers; set clear OKRs, instrumentation, and experimentation plans. * Own delivery of business-critical compliance and vendor initiatives (e.g., background checks, identity/eligibility workflows), building auditable, privacy-first systems with strong observability and SLAs. * Run large, cross-functional programs across multiple engineering and business teams; translate ambiguous requirements into crisp technical plans, manage risk and dependencies, and unblock execution. * Mentor and develop engineers through design reviews, high-quality code practices, and clear technical standards; raise the technical bar and cultivate the next generation of technical leaders. * Continuously improve reliability, performance, and cost efficiency of services; establish and enforce SLOs, drive incident learnings, and champion secure-by-default, AI-augmented development workflows. ABOUT YOU MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS * 10+ years of software engineering experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems, high-traffic services, or mobile backends. * 3+ years owning end-to-end architecture and technical strategy for a domain or product area, from design through production operations. * Proven track record leading cross-functional initiatives across 3+ teams and delivering under hard deadlines in ambiguous problem spaces. * Proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Go, Java, Python) and with modern cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS or GCP) and data stores (e.g., Postgres, DynamoDB, Redis). * Hands-on experience building AI tooling or agentic automation and integrating AI into developer workflows or product features. * Experience designing compliant systems involving identity, eligibility, certifications, or similarly sensitive workflows, with privacy and security best practices. * Demonstrated mentorship and team development experience, including leveling up engineers through design guidance and rigorous code reviews. * Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS * Experience partnering with Legal/Policy on compliance-related projects and navigating evolving labor or regulatory requirements; familiarity with audit trails and policy engines. * Background in evaluating, integrating, and managing third-party vendors; establishing technical SLAs; and executing zero-downtime migrations and fallback strategies. * Experience with experimentation platforms, analytics, and growth funnels to improve conversion, supply availability, and utilization. * Experience building mobile-first products or collaborating closely with iOS/Android teams on shopper experiences. * Familiarity with trust & safety, fraud/identity, or background screening systems in high-scale marketplaces. * Experience in marketplace, logistics, rideshare, or gig-economy environments. #LI-Remote Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work. This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location. Please review our Flex First remote work policy here. Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. Please read more about our benefits offerings here. For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below. CA, NY, CT, NJ $265,000—$279,500 USD WA $254,000—$268,000 USD OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI $243,000—$256,500 USD All other states $221,000—$233,000 USD