Instacart

Ads AI Analytics Lead II

Instacart$157K — $165K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 4-7 years in analytics engineering, data science, or applied AI with strong SQL and Python skills.
  • 2+ years of expertise in ads, retail, or e-commerce data.
  • Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL with experience in dbt and Snowflake or BigQuery.
  • Deep expertise in orchestrating data pipelines using dbt and Airflow.
  • Experience with data visualization tools (Tableau, Mode, Power BI, Looker, etc.).
  • Ability to design and run offline/online evaluations and A/B tests.
  • Fluent in Ads analytics concepts like ROAS, CPA, CTR, and pacing.

Responsibilities

  • Define Ads ontologies and metrics for various campaign components.
  • Build dbt models and curated marts in Snowflake with data contracts and SLOs.
  • Ingest and enrich unstructured Ads content for dataset publishing.
  • Design and evaluate retrieval workflows with targets for quality and latency.
  • Develop reasoning and policies for ad agents, including approval processes.
  • Establish evaluation metrics covering precision, latency, and cost.
  • Conduct experiments to quantify impact and guide iterative design.

Benefits

  • Flexibility to choose work location, whether remote or in office.
  • Regular in-person events to build community among remote workers.
  • Equity grants and annual refresh grants for new hires.
  • Highly competitive compensation and benefits in each location.
Full Job Description
Overview

The Commercial Scaled Intelligence (CSI) team is an AI-first team dedicated to delivering actionable commercial insights and scalable automation to drive revenue growth and operational efficiency across the company. The team focuses on intelligence generation, predictive analytics, and workflow automation to enable data-driven decision-making and optimize commercial performance.

As an Ads AI Analytics Lead II, you will own the intelligence behind our Ads agents. You will design the Ads semantic/context layer and build vertical AI agents that analyze campaigns, diagnose performance, and recommend actions that improve ROAS, pacing, and partner outcomes. You will partner with Ads GTM, Product, Data Science, and Engineering to ship production agents with measurable lift.

About the Job
  • Define Ads ontologies and metrics for campaigns, budgets, bids, creatives, audiences, and placements.
  • Build dbt models and curated marts in Snowflake with clear data contracts, tests, and SLOs.
  • Ingest and enrich unstructured Ads content and publish retrieval-ready datasets using our managed search/vector services.
  • Design and evaluate retrieval workflows (RAG) with existing services for hybrid search and re-ranking; set quality/latency targets and iterate via experiments.
  • Design agent reasoning and policies on ads, including tool definitions and human-in-the-loop approvals.
  • Establish evaluation suites covering precision/recall, calibration, hallucination rate, latency, and cost.
  • Run A/B or uplift experiments to quantify impact and guide iteration.
  • Translate Ads problems into agent behaviors and own KPIs such as ROAS lift, pacing accuracy, RCA precision/recall, forecast MAPE, and time-to-insight.


About You

Minimum Qualifications
  • 3-6 years in analytics engineering, data science, or applied AI with strong SQL and Python.
  • 2+ years of domain expertise in ads, retail, or e-commerce data.
  • Advanced Proficiency in Python and SQL, with experience using dbt and Snowflake or BigQuery, including skills in data modeling, testing, and managing data contracts.
  • Deep Expertise in orchestrating data pipelines using dbt and Airflow
  • Experience with at least one data visualization tool (Tableau, Mode, Power BI, Looker, or similar)
  • Ability to design offline/online evaluations and run A/B or uplift tests
  • Fluency in Ads analytics concepts such as ROAS, CPA, CTR, CVR, LTV, pacing, auction dynamics, and incrementality.
  • Strong stakeholder communication with a track record of shipping production data or AI systems that drove business impact.
  • Understanding of ML models to drive recommendations on bid, keywords, and budgets
  • Experience with evaluation and guardrail frameworks and human-in-the-loop QA.

Preferred Qualifications
  • Strong understanding of AI and machine learning concepts, with experience creating AI-driven products.
  • Deep expertise in advertising products, including leading and driving automation projects.
  • Proven ability to improve operational efficiency through automation initiatives in fast-paced environments.
  • Applied experience in modeling techniques for Ads, including forecasting, anomaly detection, uplift modeling, and causal inference.
  • Hands-on experience with workflow automation and low-code development platforms (Zapier, n8n, Gumloop, Superblocks)
  • Familiarity with retail media or ad platforms, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Shopify, or DoorDash.


#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

$157,000-$165,000 USD

WA

$150,000-$159,000 USD

OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI

$144,000-$152,000 USD

All other states

$131,000-$138,000 USD

About Instacart

Instacart is an American company that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada. The company offers its services via a website and mobile app. The service allows customers to order groceries from participating retailers with the shopping being done by a personal shopper. Instacart was founded in 2012 by entrepreneur Apoorva Mehta, a former Amazon.com employee. Apoorva was born in India and moved with his family to Canada in 2000. He studied engineering at the University of Waterloo and graduated in 2008. He was a participant in Y Combinator's Summer 2012 batch, which eventually led to the creation of Instacart. In 2013, Mehta was included on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Apoorva previously worked at BlackBerry, Qualcomm, and then Amazon as a supply chain engineer, where he developed fulfillment systems to move packages from Amazon's warehouses to customers' homes. Before founding Instacart, Apoorva had tried to start at least 20 other services. He tried building an ad network for social gaming companies, and developing a social network specifically for lawyers, among other start-ups. Instacart originally launched in San Francisco. By April 2015, the firm had about 200 employees. It introduced a new policy around June allowing some shoppers to choose to be part-time employees, starting with Chicago and Boston and extending its offer to shoppers in Atlanta, Miami, and Washington D.C. the following month.
Learn more about Instacart
Industry
Founded
2012

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