Senior Manager Software Engineering, Instacart

• If you’re energized by building zero-to-one products, scaling teams, and delivering measurable impact, we’d love to hear from you
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 4+ years directly managing software engineers (hiring, performance management, and career development)
• Track record leading teams of 8+ engineers to deliver high-impact consumer or marketplace features in production
• Hands-on experience building and shipping ML/AI-powered product experiences, including integrating modern LLMs or large-scale NLP systems in production (e.g., RAG, prompt engineering, safety/guardrails)
• Proficiency in at least one backend language (e.g., Python, Go, Java) and with a major cloud platform (AWS or GCP); strong SQL skills for data analysis and instrumentation
• Experience designing, operating, and scaling services with clear SLOs, on-call ownership, observability, and incident response
• Practical experience with experimentation platforms and A/B testing, defining success metrics, and making data-informed decisions
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Located in and eligible to work in the United States or Canada

Desirable

• Instacart’s AI Labs and Experiences team is building the next generation of product experiences that make grocery shopping smarter, more engaging, and more personal
• Our AI Experiences team is focused on delivering customer- and shopper-facing features powered by large language models and modern machine learning across web and mobile—think conversational shopping, smart lists, meal planning, and personalized discovery at scale
• As a Senior Engineering Manager, you will lead and grow a high-performing engineering team to invent, ship, and iterate AI-first experiences that reach millions of people, weekly
• You’ll partner closely with AI Labs leadership, working directly with founders and senior engineering leadership, while driving a roadmap that meaningfully moves core business metrics
• This is a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment where we roll up our sleeves, move quickly, and put it all on the table
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of 10+ engineers building AI-powered shopping and merchant experiences across mobile and web, fostering an inclusive, high-trust culture
• Own end-to-end delivery of AI features (e.g., conversational search, smart lists, meal planning, personalization), from roadmap and scoping to launch and iteration, anchored to clear OKRs
• Provide technical leadership across LLM systems, including prompt orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), safety/guardrails, online evaluation, and latency/cost optimization
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Design, Data Science, Research, and Operations; influence strategy and prioritization through clear communication and data-driven decision making
• Establish engineering excellence: code quality, testing, observability, SLOs, incident response, on-call health, and privacy/security best practices for PII and model safety
• Hire exceptional talent, manage performance, and create career growth paths; help shape the team’s operating model and rituals as we scale
• Measure business impact via instrumentation and A/B testing; rapidly iterate based on insights to improve conversion, retention, and user satisfaction