Staff Software Engineer, Ads Data Platform

Instacart; United States; On-site; USD 221,000 - 279,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Market-competitive compensation

Flexible work location

Equity grants

Job summary

A leading grocery delivery service is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to shape a robust data platform, ensuring data compliance and enhancing internal capabilities. Responsibilities include leading complex problem-solving, mentoring engineering teams, and overseeing data initiatives. The ideal candidate should have over 8 years of software development experience, expertise in Spark, SQL, and a strong ability to manage stakeholder requirements. This is a remote position with competitive compensation packages depending on the location.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software development experience is required.
• Proven ability to manage multiple stakeholders with conflicting requirements.
• Expertise in Spark, SQL, and Big Data infrastructure is essential.

Responsibilities

• Lead and resolve complex problems while maintaining the data vision.
• Collaborate with engineers and mentoree teams.
• Oversee engineering initiatives while managing risks and setting goals.

Skills

Software development experience

Spark

SQL

Big Data infrastructure

Collaboration with stakeholders

Self-motivation

Tools

Scala

Python

Terraform

Airflow

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

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will play a key role in shaping and advancing a robust data platform that addresses strategic challenges within Ads and across Instacart. You will design and build systems that capture and enforce data compliance requirements while enhancing self‑service capabilities for internal consumers, all while maintaining strong guarantees around data integrity and consistency. By consolidating diverse requirements and collaborating across multiple engineering teams, you will help drive the platform’s north‑star vision, ensuring strategic alignment and continuous delivery.

You will be part of a dynamic team focused on transforming raw data into actionable insights for a wide range of stakeholders, including advertisers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and sales teams. The team owns and operates critical systems such as metrics transformation and storage, billing, spam detection, and lift testing, supporting multiple facets of Instacart’s data infrastructure. Through this work, you will empower teams across the organization to make data‑driven decisions and directly contribute to achieving key business outcomes.

About the Job

• Lead and break down complex problems while keeping the broader data vision in focus.
• Collaborate with engineers and engineering teams, providing mentorship and fostering a strong engineering culture.
• Directly contribute to our data vision and engineering architecture. Produce and review technical artifacts that align with business goals.
• Oversee engineering initiatives end‑to‑end, proactively managing risks, setting goals, and ensuring smooth execution and delivery.
• Balance maintainability with tech debt and the development of new features.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of software development experience.
• Proven ability to work with multiple stakeholders and manage ambiguity and conflicting requirements.
• Self‑motivated with a strong sense of ownership in a fast‑paced startup environment.
• Expertise in Spark, ETLs, Distributed System architecture, MapReduce, SQL, and Big Data infrastructure.
• Experience in balancing urgency and pragmatism with high‑quality, long‑term solutions.

Preferred Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience
• Strong background in Scala and functional programming.
• Familiarity with Snowflake, Databricks, DBT, Airflow, Python, Terraform, and Go.

Instacart provides highly market‑competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work. This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location. Please review our Flex First remote work policy here.

Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. Please read more about our benefits offerings here.

For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.

CA, NY, CT, NJ: $265,000 — $279,500 USD

WA: $254,000 — $268,000 USD

OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI: $243,000 — $256,000 USD

All other states: $221,000 — $233,000 USD