Senior Software Engineer II, AI Labs & Foundations

Senior Software Engineer II, Logistic Foundation

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 The Logistics Foundation team is a cornerstone of Instacart’s fulfillment platform, advancing foundational systems that power earnings, pricing, routing, batching, matching, dispatch, and geospatial capabilities. Our mission is to unlock new capabilities and business impact through scalable, reliable architecture that elevates both engineers and AI agents, enabling efficient, compliant logistics at scale. We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to lead complex, high-visibility platform initiatives end-to-end. In this role, you will collaborate closely with cross-functional partners across Legal, Finance, Policy, Shopper, Enterprise Fulfillment, Operations, and Expansions to deliver resilient systems against hard external deadlines. You’ll join a high-impact group of approximately 15 engineers within a broader Logistics Serving and Foundation organization of about 30 engineers. This is a remote-friendly role across the U.S. and Canada, with a slight preference for candidates in the San Francisco Bay Area or Toronto. ABOUT THE JOB * Own and drive complex platform workstreams end-to-end — from engineering design docs through implementation, launch coordination, war room monitoring, and ongoing support. * Design, build, and operate high-quality, high-throughput distributed backend services with clear SLOs, robust observability, and well-run on-call/incident response practices. * Analyze and refine service and data architectures; propose and lead new systems that improve reliability, scalability, and operational excellence. * Establish and champion engineering standards through rigorous design reviews, production readiness, on-call ownership, and continuous improvement of instrumentation and alerting. * Partner with Legal, Finance, and Policy to deliver compliance-ready solutions across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory frameworks, balancing urgency with long-term maintainability. * Drive the adoption of modern technologies and AI toolsets to accelerate development, improve quality, and increase delivery velocity; mentor peers and influence platform roadmaps. * Contribute across critical fulfillment domains — earnings, pricing, routing, batching, matching, dispatch, and geospatial — delivering solutions that directly impact customers, shoppers, and partners. ABOUT YOU You thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments, communicate clearly with technical and non-technical partners, and take ownership to deliver durable solutions under tight deadlines. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS * 7+ years of backend software development experience delivering scalable, production systems end-to-end. * Proficiency in at least one backend language such as Ruby, Python, or Go. * Hands-on experience building and operating large-scale distributed backend services with defined SLOs, on-call ownership, observability, and incident response. * Proven track record independently leading complex, cross-functional projects with high ambiguity and hard external deadlines. * Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including authoring technical artifacts (e.g., ERDs, design docs) and coordinating launches with non-engineering stakeholders. * Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS * Experience with compliance-sensitive systems (e.g., pay systems, SOX, GDPR, government policy/labor regulations). * Technical experience with Ruby on Rails, Python, Golang, Postgres, Redis, and AWS. * Experience with geospatial systems, mapping, or multi-jurisdiction rule engines. * Familiarity with marketplace or logistics domain problems. * Proficiency in system performance optimization, including CPU utilization, load balancing, and latency reduction. * Experience collaborating across teams to advocate for and land platform-wide solutions. * Skilled at leveraging AI to enhance engineering velocity and efficiency. #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 $230,000—$242,000 USD WA $220,000—$232,000 USD OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI $211,000—$222,000 USD All other states $192,000—$202,000 USD

Senior Software Engineer II, Core Experience

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 This role challenges traditional approaches to digital shopping by improving backend systems that power a seamless user journey. You will lead efforts to enhance content discoverability and purchase processes, helping to perfect the interaction between user desires and our vast product offerings. The Senior Software Engineer will focus on enhancing the user experience by developing robust backend architectures that support advanced recommendation and personalization systems. In close collaboration with ML engineers, product teams, and data scientists, you will lead the innovation of our backend services, enabling sophisticated, data-driven features that adapt to our customers' shopping behaviors. The Core Experience teams are dedicated to creating engaging and straightforward shopping experiences. You will be part of a team that is at the heart of product innovation, focusing on everything from the user interfaces to the underlying systems that support our web and mobile platforms. Our team’s work is guided by a data-driven methodology that ensures decisions are aligned with consumer needs, helping us move swiftly and efficiently in our development processes. The Order Quality Team at Instacart is dedicated to delivering a seamless and dependable online grocery experience by ensuring every order is picked and delivered with the highest level of accuracy and care. We are responsible for the end to end post-checkout journey, which includes building intelligent replacement algorithms, providing real-time order status updates, and managing communication channels through SMS, push notifications, and live activity tracking. Our team also oversees features such as item summary pages, chat, cancellations and rescheduling, post-checkout pickup experience, and post order feedback, always striving to recover gracefully when things don’t go as planned. The Order Quality Team plays a vital role in creating transparency and control for customers, embodying Instacart’s commitment to operational excellence and innovation at scale. ABOUT THE JOB * Design, build, and maintain high-quality backend applications. * Lead the development of our backend system's roadmap, prioritizing scalability and reliability. * Innovate and think creatively to develop new features that enhance our customer's shopping experiences. * Own and lead major components of our product, ensuring they meet both internal standards and external expectations. * Collaborate across teams to foster a unified approach to product development, facilitating consensus and driving effective outcomes. * Responsible for the strategic planning and execution of projects you oversee, from inception to deployment and maintenance. ABOUT YOU Minimum Qualifications * 5+ years of backend development experience, with a strong record of project delivery. * Proficiency in backend languages, such as Ruby or Go. * A solid foundation in unit testing and problem-solving. * Exceptional communication skills and the ability to lead and collaborate with diverse teams. * Holds a Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience. Preferred Qualifications * Experience with recommender systems and personalization algorithms. * Familiarity with ML model development and iteration. * Deep understanding of feed architecture principles. * Skilled in the use of monitoring and observability tools like Datadog. * Extensive experience with database management, particularly PostgreSQL. #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 $230,000—$242,000 USD WA $220,000—$232,000 USD OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI $211,000—$222,000 USD All other states $192,000—$202,000 USD

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