Senior Software Engineer, ML/AI (Hybrid Role)

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

About The Role

In this role as a Senior Software Engineer, ML/AI hybrid, you’ll be bridging backend systems and applied ML to ship customer-facing features end-to-end. Day to day, you’ll design and build reliable services (REST/gRPC), data pipelines, and model inference paths that turn ideas into measurable impact. You’ll work closely with PM, Design, and Data Science to translate ambiguous problems into clear milestones, instrument experiments, and iterate quickly based on metrics and user feedback.

About The Team

You'll be at the heart of a dedicated team striving to shift customer habits from using Instacart as a convenience tool  towards healthier, convenient, and personalized meal shopping experiences. We're like a lively startup inside a well-established company, where your knack for innovation will blend with advanced AI to redefine the way families experience meals. Join us in crafting a platform that's not just convenient, but also a catalyst for positive change in daily nutrition and food enjoyment.

About The Job

• Design and implement scalable software solutions that include writing clean, maintainable, and efficient code.
• Develop and enhance features, collaborating with cross-functional teams for system integration.
• Troubleshoot applications, conduct code reviews, and continuously improve engineering practices.
• Design robust and adaptable software systems that support the dynamic requirements of our product, incorporating new technologies to boost system efficiency.
• Set standards for system scalability and reliability.
• Collaborate with product managers to ensure architectural choices support the product roadmap and assess how the system integrates with external services and APIs.
• Lead the exploration and implementation of new technologies to enhance system performance, championing best practices in software development and architecture.
• Drive the resolution of intricate technical challenges while fostering a culture of excellence and innovation in the team.
• Coordinate with different teams to achieve technical alignment and boost efficiency.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• Python + one of Go/Java; strong SQL.
• Built/operated production services/APIs (REST/gRPC) with tests & observability.
• Data/storage: Postgres/MySQL, Redis; comfort with eventing (Kafka/Pub/Sub).
• ML: PyTorch/TensorFlow (or scikit-learn), trained/evaluated models, deployed inference endpoints or batch jobs.
• Clear communicator; drives projects end-to-end with measurable impact.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on model serving using FastAPI/gRPC or a serving framework (Triton/TorchServe/Bento)—doesn’t need to be at massive scale.
• Practical ETL/feature work with Spark/Flink or SQL-based pipelines; exposure to a feature store or lightweight model registry.
• Basic experimentation (A/B testing) and simple drift/quality checks (dashboards, alerts).
• LLM experience: built prompt-based integrations (e.g., retrieval + prompt templates, tools/agents, function calling, guardrails), evaluated prompts with offline metrics, and shipped at least one workflow using an API (OpenAI/Anthropic/Vertex/Ollama).

#Li-Remote

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$195,000—$217,000 USDWA$187,000—$208,000 USDOR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI$180,000—$200,000 USDAll other states$162,000—$180,000 USD