Staff Software Engineer, Cloud Foundations

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

We’re seeking a highly experienced and passionate Staff Software Engineer to join our growing team. You’ll play a key role in designing, building, and scaling our cloud-based applications and infrastructure. If you thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative startup environment and are passionate about delivering high-quality, scalable solutions, we want to hear from you!

Our backend systems power the clients used by millions of customers every year to buy their groceries online. These systems must also support tight integration with the largest retailers in the US and Canada. Engineering at Instacart provides the opportunity to work on challenging scaling problems while also designing the features that will define our industry. You will learn how to build in an open collaborative environment serving millions of requests daily.

About the Team

• You will be part of a small team, with a large amount of ownership and autonomy for managing things directly.
• You will work closely with other application engineering teams and internal stakeholders, owning a large part of the process from problem understanding to shipping the solution.
• You will ship high quality, scalable and robust solutions with a sense of urgency.

Instacart’s technology is constantly changing and adapting. Some of the technologies you would use at Instacart include:

• Languages: Go, Ruby and Python
• Platforms: AWS and GCP
• Observability and Analytics: Datadog, Snowflake, and Sentry

About the job

• Design, implement, and manage robust and scalable cloud infrastructure solutions on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Develop and maintain backend systems using languages such as Go, Ruby on Rails, or Python in a production environment.
• Contribute to all phases of the software development lifecycle, from design and implementation to testing and deployment.
• Mentor junior engineers.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality products.
• Champion code quality, best practices, and continuous improvement through code reviews and mentorship of junior engineers.
• Dive deep into technical challenges, identify root causes, and implement effective solutions.
• Balance a sense of urgency with a commitment to delivering high-quality, pragmatic solutions.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience as a Software Engineer, with a focus on backend development.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Proven experience designing, implementing, and managing cloud infrastructure at scale.
• Strong proficiency in backend web technologies (Go, Ruby on Rails, Python).
• Deep understanding of software architecture principles, design patterns, and API design.
• Experience working with large codebases and cross-functional teams.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.
• A strong sense of ownership, self-motivation, and a passion for working in a startup environment.
• Understanding of networking concepts and protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, VPN).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, etc.)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience mentoring and guiding junior engineers.

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
$260,000—$289,000 USD

WA
$249,000—$277,000 USD

OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI
$239,000—$266,000 USD

All other states
$216,000—$252,000 USD