Senior Software Engineer, Logistics Foundations
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
About the Role - As a Senior Software Engineer on the Logistics Foundations team, you will play a pivotal role in developing the core backend and ML foundations that drive our fulfillment technology. Your work will involve shaping the vision of the foundation, optimizing performance, and collaborating closely with MLE and product engineers from the product team. Your contributions will push the boundaries of fulfillment technology and create a lasting impact across the ecosystem.
Example projects in this space include:build infrastructure that powers ML applications, such as delivery ETA prediction, while handling thousands of queries per second; architect system for ingesting and processing millions of shopper GPS data; build systems that reinvent the abstractions, data-model, and inter-service communication of the fulfillment systems.
About the Team - This role will be positioned within the Fulfillment organization. It is responsible for all aspects of the order life cycle, both for full-service orders picked by Instacart shoppers and orders backed by Instacart’s white-label integration with retail partners.
The hiring team is the Logistics Foundations team, a cornerstone of our operations focused on shaping the future of fulfillment architecture. Our vision is to enable new capabilities that drive both business and strategic impact through cutting-edge engineering solutions, maximizing the efficiency of MLEs and product engineers. By advancing foundational systems, our team plays a critical role in enabling efficient, scalable logistics solutions, driving growth, and ensuring success across the organization.
About the Job
- Own and lead major components of our foundation, lead the development of the system's roadmap, prioritizing scalability and reliability.
- Design, build, and maintain high-quality, high-throughput foundation systems to empower Machine Learning Engineers and product engineers.
- Analyze and refine our architecture to propose new systems that improve delivery and operational excellence.
- Establish new standards to improve the engineering quality of the organization, promoting a culture of excellence.
- Drive the adoption of cutting-edge technologies and employ advanced AI toolsets to accelerate development processes within the organization.
About You
Minimum Qualifications
- 5+ years of backend development experience in building scalable solutions and architecture, with a strong record of project delivery.
- Proficiency in backend languages, such as Ruby, Python or Go.
- Proficiency in maintaining production services to the highest standards.
- Proven ability to write efficient code quickly and manage high-traffic production services.
- Exceptional communication skills and the ability to lead and collaborate with diverse teams.
Preferred Qualifications
- Skilled at navigating ambiguity.
- Experience working across teams to champion platform solutions.
- Proficiency in system performance optimization such as CPU utilization, load balancing, and latency reduction.
- Expertise in leveraging AI to enhance delivery velocity and efficiency.
- Effectively lead a cross-functional team, demonstrating strong teamwork skills, and capable of clearly communicating ideas and fostering alignment across different departments.
- Familiarity with ML foundation development and iteration.
- Skilled in the use of monitoring and observability tools like Datadog.
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. Currently, we are only hiring in the following provinces: Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia.
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 Canadian based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.