Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Instacart; Ontario; Remote; CAD 203,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading grocery technology firm is looking for experienced Sr. Machine Learning professionals to design and deploy advanced AI solutions. You will collaborate with product teams and lead the integration of ML for an enhanced customer experience. The ideal candidate has a graduate degree in AI or ML and significant industry experience. This is a remote role with competitive pay and benefits.

Qualifications

• 7+ years industry experience using ML on large datasets.
• Expertise with deep learning frameworks and LLM architectures.
• Experience with fine-tuning large language models.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy advanced AI and ML solutions.
• Collaborate with product teams to translate requirements into impactful AI applications.
• Ensure AI solutions are ethically integrated and aligned with business goals.

Skills

Programming in Python

Strong communication skills

Problem-solving skills

Education

Graduate degree (Master's or PhD) in AI or ML

Tools

scikit-learn

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

We're transforming the grocery industry

At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on for groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to our Personal Shoppers.

Instacart has become a lifeline for millions, and we’re building a team to help push our shopping cart forward. If you’re ready to do your best work, join us.

Instacart is a Flex First team

Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they work—whether from home, an office, or a coffee shop—while staying connected through in-person events. Learn more about our flexible work approach.

Overview

About the Role: This is a general posting for multiple Sr. Machine Learning roles across our marketplace. You will learn about different ML team problems during the process. We will match you to a team based on your skills and interests at the end.

About the Team:

Search & Discovery ML: We apply cutting-edge AI, including large language models (LLMs), to revolutionize how customers find products. Working with top engineers, data scientists, and product managers, we build sophisticated ML and AI systems for search and recommendations, leveraging transformer architectures, multimodal AI, and generative models to improve relevance and user experience.

About the Job:

• Design, develop, and deploy advanced AI and ML solutions, including LLMs and neural networks, for our marketplace challenges.
• Build state-of-the-art deep learning systems using transformer models, multimodal AI, and generative techniques.
• Collaborate with product teams to translate requirements into impactful AI applications.
• Apply foundation models, prompt engineering, and fine-tuning to enhance AI understanding of context and user intent.
• Ensure AI solutions are ethically integrated and aligned with business goals.
• Innovate continuously by researching and implementing the latest ML advancements.
• Improve operational efficiency through automation, predictive modeling, and optimization.

About You:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Graduate degree (Master's or PhD) in AI, ML, or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years industry experience using ML on large datasets.
• Strong programming skills in Python, SQL, Pandas, and ML frameworks like scikit-learn, XGBoost, Keras/TensorFlow.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Strong communication skills to collaborate across teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Expertise with deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX) and LLM architectures.
• Experience with fine-tuning large language models, prompt engineering, and inference optimization.
• Solid understanding of neural networks, generative models, and adaptation techniques like PEFT, LoRA, RLHF.
• Proven success deploying ML/AI systems that improve recommendations and search relevance.
• Experience optimizing AI models across full stack deployment.
• Self-motivated innovator with a strong sense of ownership.
• Passion for applying AI research responsibly and effectively at scale.

We offer competitive pay and benefits. This role is remote, with hiring limited to Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia. The pay range for Canadian candidates is CAD 203,000 — 225,000, depending on experience. Benefits details and our remote work policy are available on our website.