Senior Staff/Principal Software Engineer, Instacart

• The ideal candidate will possess deep expertise in distributed systems, streaming processing, data intensive applications, and particularly, the deployment, scaling, and optimization of Machine Learning models in production
• If you are a highly motivated and experienced engineer with a passion for solving complex technical challenges across distributed systems, data engineering, and ML serving, we encourage you to apply
• Extensive experience in software engineering, with a focus on distributed systems, streaming processing (e.g., Flink), data intensive applications, and particularly, Machine Learning serving and deployment
• Proven track record of designing, implementing, and scaling large-scale, high-performance systems, including ML serving infrastructure
• Deep understanding of database technologies, data modeling, data pipelines, and ML model deployment patterns
• Strong architectural skills and the ability to design and evaluate complex technical solutions across diverse technology domains, including Catalog, Streaming, and Machine Learning
• Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills, with specific experience in addressing issues related to ML model serving, data quality, and infrastructure stability
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to effectively work across teams, influence stakeholders, and mentor junior engineers
• Experience with cloud platforms and related technologies, including ML serving platforms (e.g., Sagemaker)
• Ability to quantify and demonstrate the impact of technical contributions on business results (e.g., revenue, efficiency, cost savings, and ML model performance)
• Familiarity with challenges related to ML lifecycle, data flow, and best practices

Desirable

• We are seeking a highly experienced and visionary Sr. Staff or Principal Engineer to join our Customers organization
• This role is crucial for the evolution and scalability of our core Catalog and data intensive systems, while also playing a pivotal role in advancing our Machine Learning serving and serving infrastructure capabilities
• This position will not only impact core business functions and drive significant revenue but also shape the future of our personalized, real-time ML-driven experiences
• This is a unique opportunity to join a dynamic and innovative team, and to make a significant impact on the future of our platform by advancing both our core data infrastructure and our Machine Learning capabilities
• Join a dynamic team at the heart of Instacart's success, leading the core shopping experience that millions of users rely on
• We are obsessive about perfecting every aspect of the customer shopping journey on the app, encompassing UX formats, feeds, algorithms, personalization, recommender engines, and ranking systems to deliver an exceptional experience
• Provide architectural leadership for Catalog, streaming, and data-intensive systems, emphasizing ML serving infrastructure and best practices, and drive the technical roadmap
• Design, build, and scale reliable, efficient, and adaptable solutions to address changing business and ML needs
• Lead the development and optimization of ML serving endpoints, ensuring high availability, low latency, robust performance, and implement fail-fast input validations and track metrics using Datadog
• Centralize ML serving logic and decouple it from product applications to improve debugging, manageability, and system performance
• Drive and contribute to company-wide transformational initiatives, impacting key business metrics like revenue, personalization, and operational efficiency, and influence the direction of ML infrastructure including real-time inferencing
• Serve as a subject matter expert for Catalog, streaming, data-intensive, and ML serving technologies, providing guidance and mentorship to engineering and data science teams
• Identify and implement innovative solutions to optimize system performance, reduce costs, and improve data processing and ML serving latency
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Product, Retailer, IC App, Ads, ML Infrastructure, and Data Science, to deliver integrated ML-driven solutions, and lead incident response and resolution for high-severity issues