Engineering Manager, Order Experience

EngineersOfAI; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Instacart is a North American leader in online grocery, building a flexible, high‑velocity engineering culture. We are hiring an Engineering Manager for the Order Experience team, responsible for checkout architecture, order management, and post‑order quality.

You will drive collaboration with 10+ partner teams and balance reliability with rapid delivery. The role emphasizes strategic leadership, architectural health, and people management in a high‑volume environment that directly impacts

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with leadership of 8+ engineers.
• Experience owning and scaling backend systems in high-traffic, production environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow an engineering organization of 8+ engineers responsible for checkout architecture, order management, and post‑order quality.
• Serve as the primary engineering point of contact for 10+ partner teams across the organization.
• Drive platform thinking to rebuild and modernize foundational systems while balancing shipping velocity.
• Own end-to-end engineering execution including roadmap alignment, technical strategy, and team development.
• Partner with product, design, data science, and cross‑functional leaders to shape the future of order infrastructure.

Skills

Team leadership

Backend scalability

High‑traffic systems

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

Instacart is the North American leader in online grocery and one of the fastest-growing companies in e-commerce. Since 2012, we've been working toward creating a world where everyone has access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Behind every seamless order is a foundation of complex systems working in perfect coordination and the Order Experience team is at the heart of it all.

The Order Experience team owns some of the most mission-critical infrastructure at Instacart, including checkout architecture, order management, and post-order quality. These systems sit at the intersection of nearly every major product initiative across the company, making this team a foundational dependency for how Instacart delivers value to customers, shoppers, retailers, and brand partners alike.

We're looking for an Engineering Manager to lead this team of 8+ engineers and bring both strategic vision and hands‑on technical leadership to a domain where reliability, scalability, and conversion all matter. This is a role for someone who thrives in complexity, knows how to balance long‑term platform thinking with near‑term shipping, and can navigate a high‑volume, cross‑functional environment with clarity and confidence.

About the Job

• Lead and grow an engineering organization of 8+ engineers responsible for checkout architecture, order management, and post‑order quality. These systems are foundational to Instacart's core customer experience and directly impact conversion and reliability at scale.
• Serve as the primary engineering point of contact for 10+ partner teams across the organization, managing high‑volume intake, setting clear prioritization frameworks, and ensuring Order Experience remains a reliable, well‑scoped dependency for every major launch at Instacart.
• Drive platform thinking across the team by identifying opportunities to rebuild and modernize foundational systems without sacrificing the pace of shipping customer‑facing value, and making principled trade‑offs between short‑term delivery and long‑term architectural health.
• Own engineering execution end to end: from roadmap alignment and technical strategy to team health, hiring, and career development for a high‑performing group of engineers navigating a fast‑moving, high‑stakes domain.
• Partner closely with product, design, data science, and cross‑functional engineering leaders to define the future of order infrastructure to influence how Instacart scales its checkout and fulfillment systems as the business continues to grow.

About You

We’re looking for a leader who has both the strategic and people‑management skills to drive this team forward.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in an engineering management role leading teams of 8 or more engineers
• Demonstrated experience owning and scaling backend systems in a high‑traffic, production environment, including systems related to e-commerce, order management, checkout, or similar transactional domains