About the role
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.
