Staff Software Engineer, Bazel & Go

EngineersOfAI; Canada; On-site; CAD 130,000 - 195,000; Full time

Job summary

Instacart's Developer Experience team enables 1000+ engineers by building platforms, tools, and practices that boost velocity. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will own Bazel and Go direction, write code, set architecture, and mentor peers while driving improvements in build times and CI reliability.

You'll work across the organization to advance build infrastructure and developer tooling, helping engineers ship high-quality software faster and with greater velocity.

Qualifications

• Hands-on technical leadership with Bazel and Go.
• Experience driving cross-team architectural changes.
• Strong written and verbal communication for technical docs.

Responsibilities

• Lead Bazel build system direction including remote caching and remote build execution.
• Lead the Go platform, frameworks, and libraries across Instacart.
• Design multi-quarter initiatives to improve build times, CI reliability, and local development loop.
• Own developer experience metrics; define, instrument and prioritize investment.
• Partner with infrastructure, platform, and product engineering teams to rollout changes with minimal disruption.
• Set the technical bar for reliability, performance, upgrade cadence, and ergonomics.
• Mentor engineers and grow the Bazel/Go expert community.
• Represent the team in cross-org technical discussions on build, CI/CD, and backend platform direction.

Skills

Bazel

Go

Tools

Bazel

Go

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. Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers.

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

Instacart is a Flex First team

There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work. Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their best work—whether it’s from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop—while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work.

OVERVIEW

The Developer Experience team at Instacart is the force multiplier for our 1000+ engineers. We define and build the platforms, tools, and practices that enable Instacart engineers to ship high-quality software faster — from AI-powered code review to build infrastructure, developer onboarding, and local development environments. Our success is measured in developer velocity: how quickly an engineer can take an idea from concept to production.

As a Staff Software Engineer on Developer Experience, you will lead two of the pillars that Instacart engineering is built on: Bazel (our build system) and Go (one of our core backend languages). You will own the technical direction for how thousands of daily builds run and how our Go services are structured, from remote build execution and caching to the frameworks, libraries, and patterns Go engineers use every day. This is a hands‑on technical leadership role. You'll write code, set architectural direction, and partner across the org to move engineering‑wide metrics on build performance, CI reliability, and developer velocity.

About the Job

• Lead the technical direction for Instacart's Bazel build system, including remote caching, remote build execution (RBE), build performance, and the developer‑facing ergonomics of the build.
• Lead the technical direction for our Go platform, frameworks, standard libraries, service scaffolding, and patterns that Go engineers across Instacart depend on.
• Design and drive multi‑quarter initiatives that measurably improve build times, CI reliability, and the local development loop for engineers working in Bazel and Go.
• Own the developer experience metrics for the systems you lead, define what "good" looks like, instrument it, and use the data to prioritize investment.
• Partner with infrastructure, platform, and product engineering teams to roll out changes to the build system and Go platform with minimal disruption.
• Set the technical bar for the systems you own on reliability, performance, upgrade cadence, and developer ergonomics.
• Mentor engineers in the team and the broader engineering org; grow the community of Bazel and Go experts at Instacart.
• Represent the team in cross‑org technical discussions on build, CI/CD, and backend platform direction.

About You

• A hands‑on technical leader who is equally comfortable in a Bazel BUILD file, a Go service, and a design doc.
• Metrics‑driven, You use build times, cache hit rates, CI reliability, and developer feedback to guide where to invest.
• A multiplier. You make the engineers around you more effective through mentorship, clear technical writing, and pragmatic guidance.
• Comfortable driving cross‑team change. You can build consensus for a migration or a platform shift and see it through to adoption.

Minimum Qualifications