Senior Risk & Compliance Engineer (Data)

Instacart; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Instacart is seeking a Senior Risk & Compliance Engineer to build an automated, engineering-grade risk program that delivers real-time risk scoring and quantified exposure models for leadership and the board.

The role combines security, data, and business impact, requiring production-level code, signal ingestion pipelines, and probabilistic modeling to drive remediation and investment decisions at scale.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in production ML or probabilistic models.
• 5+ years data engineering with Python/SQL.
• Experience building real-time data pipelines.
• Knowledge of threat intel enrichment pipelines, EPSS, or CISA KEVF.
• Familiarity with FAIR or NIST CSF/SOC 2.
• Ability to translate risk outputs into executive narratives.
• Passion for building systems protecting customers.

Responsibilities

• Build automated signal ingestion pipelines that pull real-time security data, normalize, enrich, and score findings into risk intelligence.
• Develop probabilistic risk models expressing security exposure as distributions and link outputs to investments and board reports.
• Identify high-leverage remediation points across the attack surface to maximize ROI of the security program.
• Create dashboards translating complex model outputs into clear risk visibility for security, engineering, and executives.
• Quantify risk in financial terms and connect outputs to board-level reporting.

Skills

Python

SQL

Machine learning

Data pipelines

Risk modeling

Probabilistic models

Bayesian models

Real-time data

Dashboards

Executive communication

Tools

PostgreSQL

Presto

SparkSQL

Job description

• Instacart’s Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) team sits at the intersection of security, data, and business impact — and we’re building an automated, engineering-grade risk program that produces real-time risk scoring, quantified exposure models, and ROI-linked investment decisions that reach the CISO, executive leadership, and the board
• We’re looking for a Senior Risk & Compliance Engineer to help us get there
• This is an engineering role with a data science expertise needed. You’ll write production-level code, build signal ingestion pipelines, and develop probabilistic risk models that give our security organization a quantified, confidence-backed view of our risk posture — all in service of protecting Instacart’s customers and products at scale
• Build automated signal ingestion pipelines that pull real-time data from security tooling — normalizing, enriching, and scoring raw findings into actionable, ranked risk intelligence that drives remediation decisions across the organization
• Develop probabilistic risk models that express security exposure as probability distributions, giving leadership a quantified, confidence-backed view of breach likelihood and expected losses — connecting model outputs directly to investment decisions and board-level reporting
• Identify systemic choke points across the attack surface — high-leverage remediation paths where a single fix eliminates risk at scale — and prioritize them by expected impact to maximize the efficiency of our security program
• Build dashboards and data-driven insights that cascade risk visibility across security, engineering, and executive stakeholders, translating complex model outputs into language that resonates at every level of the organization
• Support risk quantification efforts that express security exposure in financial terms, connecting model outputs to investment decisions and board-level reporting

If you’re energized by the challenge of transforming a manual, reactive discipline into a data-driven, automated program — providing value across security, engineering, and executive stakeholders while doing it — this role was built for youExperience developing metrics that inform security and business decisionsExperience with data modeling for classification, normalization, and risk or anomaly detection signal development3+ years of experience building and deploying machine learning or probabilistic models (e.g., Bayesian models) in a production environmentExperience building data pipelines that ingest real-time or near-real-time data across multiple formats, handling both stream and batch processing at scale5+ years of experience in data engineering, with demonstrated ability to write production-level code in Python and SQL (PostgreSQL, Presto, or SparkSQL) — you write production level code for internal tools and infrastructureFamiliarity with security risk concepts including threat intelligence enrichment pipelines, EPSS, or CISA KEVFamiliarity with quantitative risk frameworks such as FAIRExposure to security frameworks such as NIST CSF, SOC 2 as context for what controls the data is measuringDemonstrated ability to translate risk model outputs into executive or board-level narrativesA genuine passion for building systems that protect customers and products, and a track record of operating effectively in fast-paced, ambiguous environments where the program is still being shaped