Staff Android Engineer, Instacart

• If you thrive in a fast-paced environment, enjoy working close to hardware, and love solving complex systems problems, this role is for you
• 8+ years of professional Android development experience using Kotlin, including Coroutines/Flows and Jetpack, with a track record of shipping and operating production systems or embedded Android products
• Hands-on expertise with edge-device networking and reliability, including MQTT or similar pub/sub, connectivity management (Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth), offline-first data sync, and production observability (crash/ANR monitoring, logging, metrics)
• Proven experience integrating hardware peripherals on Android—such as payment terminals (EMV/contactless), barcode/RFID/sensors—and applying secure communication and device security fundamentals
• Demonstrated ability to drive cross-team technical initiatives and mentor other engineers; skilled at breaking down complex platform problems, leading design reviews, and running effective incident postmortems
• Proficiency with modern Android architecture and tooling (multi-module design, dependency injection with Dagger/Hilt, Gradle and CI/CD, performance profiling); Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience

Desirable

• Instacart’s Caper team is building the next generation of in-store retail technology—from smart carts to connected checkout experiences—powered by Android at the edge
• We partner closely with hardware, firmware, payments, security, and cloud teams to deliver reliable, low-latency, and secure experiences that delight retailers, shoppers, and store associates
• We’re hiring an Android Engineer to join the Caper Android Platform team
• This is not a typical “app” role—you’ll be the technical authority across network reliability (including MQTT and connectivity management), payment terminal integrations, sensor processing, application architecture, and Android platform modernization
• You’ll operate at platform depth while influencing product experiences at scale
• You’ll help keep our in-store systems running with 99.9% uptime, shepherd cross-team initiatives from design to rollout, and mentor senior engineers across a broader org of Android developers
• Own reliability and performance for the Android platform that powers Caper devices, setting standards and practices that drive 99.9%+ in-store uptime
• Design and harden connectivity layers, including MQTT-based messaging, Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth management, offline-first sync, and intelligent backoff/retry strategies
• Integrate and secure payment terminal workflows (e.g., EMV/contactless), partnering with vendors and internal security to deliver resilient, compliant transactions
• Build and optimize real-time data pipelines for sensors and peripherals (e.g., barcode, weight, camera, RFID), ensuring low-latency processing and fault tolerance
• Modernize Android architecture and tooling (Kotlin, Jetpack, multi-module, DI, testing, CI/CD), guiding migrations and establishing reusable platform libraries and SDKs
• Lead cross-team technical initiatives end-to-end—from RFCs and design reviews to staged rollouts and incident response—while mentoring senior engineers and raising the engineering bar