Senior Software Engineer, Instacart

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production services
• 3+ years of hands-on experience in at least one of: Python, Go, or Java
• 2+ years of experience integrating ML or LLM capabilities into applications (e.g., via OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source frameworks such as LangChain or LlamaIndex) and shipping them to production
• Practical experience with cloud platforms (AWS or GCP), containers (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Proficiency with SQL and data modeling; experience building or maintaining data pipelines (e.g., Airflow, Dagster, or similar)
• Experience owning services end-to-end, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability (logging, metrics, tracing), and participation in an on-call rotation
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Desirable

• Instacart’s AI Productivity team builds AI-powered platforms and tools that help our engineers and operators move faster, reduce toil, and deliver higher-quality experiences for customers, shoppers, retailers, and brand partners
• As a Senior Software Engineer on this team, you will design, build, and operate production systems that bring large language models and intelligent automation into everyday workflows across Instacart
• You’ll partner closely with product, developer platform, ML platform, security, and data teams to ship reliable, secure, and measurable solutions that improve developer velocity and operational efficiency
• You’ll join a collaborative group of approximately 10 engineers who value ownership, iteration, and pragmatic problem solving. If you enjoy rolling up your sleeves, navigating ambiguity, and turning cutting-edge AI into real, scalable products, this role is for you. This position is remote-friendly across Canada
• Design, build, and operate AI-powered services and internal applications—such as code and test assistants, knowledge search, and intelligent chat workflows—that improve developer and operator productivity at scale
• Implement robust back-end services in languages such as Python, Go, or Java; integrate foundation models via APIs and open-source frameworks; and apply techniques like retrieval-augmented generation and vector search where appropriate
• Own projects end-to-end, including requirements, technical design, implementation, testing, deployment, observability, on-call participation, and iterative improvements focused on reliability, latency, and cost efficiency
• Partner with Developer Platform, ML Platform, Security, and Legal to ensure safe and compliant AI usage, including data governance, guardrails, content/prompt safety, and privacy-by-design
• Define and track success with clear metrics (e.g., adoption, task completion time, DORA/SPACE signals, satisfaction), and run experiments and A/B tests to validate impact and guide iteration
• Create and maintain shared tooling, libraries, and documentation that raise the bar for applied AI development across Instacart, and mentor teammates on best practices in this fast-paced, evolving space