Why this role is on the menu

The Legal department at Instacart is scaling rapidly across new business models, ad formats, and retail partnerships, and the systems and workflows that support it need to keep pace. Right now, legal operations, technology, and AI enablement are evolving in parallel without a single leader owning the strategy end-to-end. This role exists to close that gap: to build the infrastructure, tooling, and team capabilities that make the legal function faster, smarter, and more accountable. Twelve months from now, Instacart will have a modern contract lifecycle management system, a deployed AI enablement program with meaningful adoption, and a legal operations team with clear KPIs and the processes to sustain them. If you thrive at the intersection of law, operations, and technology, and want to build something that lasts, this role is for you

What you'll cook up in your first year

• A high-performing legal operations team is built and running, with clear direction, performance management, and the capacity to serve the full organization.
• An AI enablement program is live and adopted: AI-powered tools evaluated, deployed, and embedded into attorney workflows, with agentic automations reducing manual legal work and professionals upskilled across the team.
• Legal and business operations initiatives are executed and scaled, including Go-To-Market strategies, CPQ implementations and enhancements, and Ironclad workflows supporting new ad formats, retailer engagements, and other workstreams.
• Contract lifecycle management systems and cross-system integrations are continuously improved, with cohesive collaboration across procurement, accounting, HR, sales, deal desk, IT, and engineering, and operational savings generated from Oracle, Zip, Salesforce, and Workday integrations with CLM and P2P workflows.
• Outside counsel operations are running with clear accountability: billing guidelines enforced, e-billing systems managed, law firm evaluations complete, and spend reporting established.
• The team's knowledge management infrastructure is built and maintained, and KPI dashboards give leadership clear visibility into operational health.

The secret ingredients we're looking for

Must-have pantry staples (Minimum Qualifications)

• 8+ years of experience in legal operations, strategy & operations, or a related field, with demonstrated ownership of a legal operations program and at least 3 years of direct people management experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading at least two end-to-end technology implementations with deep systems integrations (e.g., Ironclad, Zip, Salesforce, CPQ, Oracle, Workday, or comparable platforms), including hands-on experience owning AI tooling, evaluating vendors, deploying tools, and building or managing AI-assisted or agentic workflows.
• Strong analytical and project management skills, with the ability to drive multiple complex initiatives simultaneously in a fast-paced, evolving environment.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with direct experience collaborating across legal, policy, finance, IT, and business teams.

Optional garnishes (Preferred Qualifications)

• Experience working in a high-growth or recently public technology company with a complex, multi-jurisdictional operational footprint, including exposure to marketplace or platform businesses.
• Experience designing agentic or automated legal workflows, with a bias toward building solutions before defaulting to off-the-shelf tools.
• Familiarity with legal operations communities (e.g., CLOC) or equivalent professional development, and experience conducting vendor RFPs or law firm evaluations with a focus on outside counsel cost discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to lead change management efforts that drive organizational adoption of new technology and processes across a distributed legal function.

#LI-Remote