Instacart

Senior Data Scientist I - Meals

Instacart • $161K — $204K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 4+ years of experience in data science or a related field
  • Strong foundation in product and data analysis, including A/B experimentation
  • Proven ability to define KPIs and optimize for product market fit
  • Excellent communicator, able to present complex data findings clearly
  • Bachelor's degree in a quantitative discipline, or equivalent experience

Responsibilities

  • Lead the scaling of data science work for the Meals initiative post-MVP launch
  • Design and maintain metric tracking frameworks to quantify impact on user engagement
  • Drive the experimentation strategy from hypothesis creation to result analysis
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align strategy and share insights
  • Help define success metrics for a high-impact 0-1 product initiative

Benefits

  • Remote work flexibility under the Flex First policy
  • Equity grants for new hires and annual refresh grants
  • Comprehensive benefits package
  • Market-competitive compensation based on location
  • Opportunity for significant career impact in a key strategic area
Full Job Description
Overview

We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist to lead the Meals initiative - one of Instacart's top strategic priorities for 2027. This role is focused on scaling data science work following the MVP launch, with metric tracking and experimentation at the core. You will play a key role in driving engagement, activations, and reactivations for Instacart through a high-visibility, high-impact 01 initiative. This is an opportunity to shape the direction of a major product area in close partnership with Product, Engineering, and Design.
About the Job
  • Lead data science for the Meals initiative, owning the post-MVP scale-up of DS systems and infrastructure
  • Design, build, and maintain metric tracking frameworks to measure the impact of Meals on engagement, activation, and reactivation
  • Drive experimentation strategy - from hypothesis definition to analysis and recommendation - to guide product decisions
  • Partner closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and Designers to align on strategy and communicate data-driven insights
  • Contribute to a 01 initiative at a critical inflection point, helping define what success looks like at scale
About You
Minimum Qualifications
  • Proven experience in consumer-facing product data science, partnering closely with Product Managers, Engineering Leads, and Data Engineers
  • Strong data science foundation: product and data analysis, A/B experimentation, causal inference, and statistical modeling
  • Experience defining KPIs, and optimizing funnel for product market fit
  • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to synthesize complex technical findings for senior business and engineering stakeholders
  • 4+ years of work experience in a data science or related field
  • Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field (e.g., Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Economics, Engineering) or equivalent practical experience
Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience bridging offline evaluation metrics (e.g., NDCG, precision/recall, human evaluation) with online experiments and business outcomes.
  • Background in causal inference beyond standard A/B tests (e.g., holdouts, diff-in-diff, quasi-experiments) to measure long-term or cross-surface effects.
  • Proven impact improving logging, instrumentation, and metric definitions in complex data environments.
  • Experience launching new features in new markets, or launching 0-1 initiatives


#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

$194,000-$204,500 USD

WA

$185,000-$195,500 USD

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

$177,000-$187,000 USD

All other states

$161,000-$170,000 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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