Principal Software Engineer, Ads Quality

Instacart

150d • $278,000 - $372,000

About The Position

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.

Requirements

• PhD in AI / ML or related field, or equivalent academic and research experience.
• 15+ years of experience as a software and / or ML engineer.
• Proven track record of architecting & building production-grade ML systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical discussions and collaborate effectively at senior to executive levels.
• Experience mentoring and developing engineering culture and talent.

Nice To Haves

• Hands-on expertise in building large-scale AI/ML systems bridging generative AI, predictive modeling, and recommendation engines.
• Deep understanding of Ads Quality systems, including bidding, yield optimization, retrieval processes, and auction dynamics.
• Familiar with AWS, Golang, Spark, Clickhouse, Snowflake, TensorFlow.

Responsibilities

• Develop & design innovative AI-powered systems addressing a wide range of Ads Quality challenges.
• Optimize ads bidding, retrieval and auction processes toward a diverse set of advertiser goals.
• Balance between user, advertiser, and retailer needs, and turn such solutions into quantifiable, optimizable formulations.
• Identify and build gen AI solutions to revolutionize all aspects of the quality stack.
• Build advanced generative AI and recommendation frameworks revolutionizing advertiser experience and campaign efficacy.
• Construct systems and frameworks to provide intelligent recommendations and assistance to advertisers.
• Collaborate with Data Scientists to establish metrics and methodologies for tracking, optimization, and goaling purposes.
• Define & own the Ads Quality technical strategy and roadmap.
• Demonstrate ability to architect and design complex AI / quality components.
• Serve as a technical leader and mentor, guiding and empowering junior ML and software engineers.
• Build and maintain synergies with other ML engineering teams across Instacart.
• Contribute to company-level technical initiatives as a thought leader.

Benefits

• Highly market-competitive compensation and benefits.
• Eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees