Senior Software Engineer II, Logistic Foundation

Instacart

11h•$192,000 - $242,000•Hybrid

About The Position

At Instacart, the company is transforming the grocery industry by providing an essential service for grocery and household goods delivery, offering flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers. Instacart operates with a "Flex First" approach, allowing employees flexibility in their work location—whether it’s from home, an office, or a coffee shop—while fostering community through regular in-person events. The Logistics Foundation team is a cornerstone of Instacart’s fulfillment platform, advancing foundational systems that power earnings, pricing, routing, batching, matching, dispatch, and geospatial capabilities. Their mission is to unlock new capabilities and business impact through scalable, reliable architecture that elevates both engineers and AI agents, enabling efficient, compliant logistics at scale. This role is for a Senior Software Engineer to lead complex, high-visibility platform initiatives end-to-end. In this position, you will collaborate closely with cross-functional partners across Legal, Finance, Policy, Shopper, Enterprise Fulfillment, Operations, and Expansions to deliver resilient systems against hard external deadlines. You will join a high-impact group of approximately 15 engineers within a broader Logistics Serving and Foundation organization of about 30 engineers. This is a remote-friendly role across the U.S. and Canada, with a slight preference for candidates in the San Francisco Bay Area or Toronto.

Requirements

7+ years of backend software development experience delivering scalable, production systems end-to-end.
Proficiency in at least one backend language such as Ruby, Python, or Go.
Hands-on experience building and operating large-scale distributed backend services with defined SLOs, on-call ownership, observability, and incident response.
Proven track record independently leading complex, cross-functional projects with high ambiguity and hard external deadlines.
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including authoring technical artifacts (e.g., ERDs, design docs) and coordinating launches with non-engineering stakeholders.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with compliance-sensitive systems (e.g., pay systems, SOX, GDPR, government policy/labor regulations).
Technical experience with Ruby on Rails, Python, Golang, Postgres, Redis, and AWS.
Experience with geospatial systems, mapping, or multi-jurisdiction rule engines.
Familiarity with marketplace or logistics domain problems.
Proficiency in system performance optimization, including CPU utilization, load balancing, and latency reduction.
Experience collaborating across teams to advocate for and land platform-wide solutions.
Skilled at leveraging AI to enhance engineering velocity and efficiency.

Responsibilities

Own and drive complex platform workstreams end-to-end — from engineering design docs through implementation, launch coordination, war room monitoring, and ongoing support.
Design, build, and operate high-quality, high-throughput distributed backend services with clear SLOs, robust observability, and well-run on-call/incident response practices.
Analyze and refine service and data architectures; propose and lead new systems that improve reliability, scalability, and operational excellence.
Establish and champion engineering standards through rigorous design reviews, production readiness, on-call ownership, and continuous improvement of instrumentation and alerting.
Partner with Legal, Finance, and Policy to deliver compliance-ready solutions across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory frameworks, balancing urgency with long-term maintainability.
Drive the adoption of modern technologies and AI toolsets to accelerate development, improve quality, and increase delivery velocity; mentor peers and influence platform roadmaps.
Contribute across critical fulfillment domains — earnings, pricing, routing, batching, matching, dispatch, and geospatial — delivering solutions that directly impact customers, shoppers, and partners.