Instacart

Senior Software Engineer - Core Experience, Growth

Instacart$168K — $177K *
US-AnywhereRemote in Canada
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 4+ years of backend software engineering experience.
  • Proficient in a modern backend language and framework (e.g., Go, Python, Java, Ruby, Node.js).
  • Hands-on experience with RESTful or gRPC APIs and microservices in production.
  • Strong knowledge of relational databases and NoSQL stores; SQL optimization skills.
  • Experience collaborating with Product and Data Science teams for data-driven features.
  • Familiarity with cloud services (AWS, GCP) and container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
  • Ability to write clean code and strong debugging capabilities.

Responsibilities

  • Design and build backend services and APIs for coupon merchandising.
  • Implement and iterate end-to-end A/B tests in collaboration with Product and Data Science.
  • Optimize codebase and product for reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
  • Collaborate to define roadmaps and success metrics; communicate tradeoffs effectively.
  • Maintain high engineering standards through code reviews and documentation.
  • Work with frontend and mobile engineers for cohesive user experiences.

Benefits

  • Remote work flexibility with a Flex First policy.
  • Competitive compensation and benefits package.
  • Eligibility for new hire equity grant and annual refresh grants.
  • Opportunities for career growth and skill development.
Full Job Description
Overview

Instacart's Growth Lifecycle Incentives team builds coupon experiences, one of the company's core revenue drivers. We own the end-to-end experience for coupon storing, serving, ranking, and merchandising in app, web and CRM, partnering closely with Product, Data Science and Machine Learning Engineers, Retailer Managers to deliver features that make the coupon more valuable and accessible. We're looking for Senior Software Engineers to design and build backend services and user-facing experiences.

You'll join a team of 19 engineers operating in a fast-paced environment. If you thrive on tackling complex problems, balancing new feature work with retailer-driven requests and technical debt, and rolling up your sleeves to deliver impact, this role is for you.
About the Job
  • Design, build, and own backend services, APIs, and data integrations that power coupon merchandising.
  • Implement and iterate on experiments end-to-end-partnering with Product and Data Science to ideate, launch, measure, and refine A/B tests that move key metrics.
  • Identify and execute codebase and product optimizations that improve reliability, performance, and cost efficiency across distributed systems.
  • Collaborate cross-functionally to define roadmaps, success metrics, and guardrails; communicate tradeoffs clearly in a fast-paced, experiment-driven environment.
  • Uphold high engineering standards through code reviews, testing, documentation, and thoughtful architecture decisions that balance speed with quality.
  • Partner with frontend and mobile engineers to deliver cohesive, high-quality experiences across web, iOS, and Android.
About You
Minimum Qualifications
  • 4+ years of professional software engineering experience with a focus on backend development.
  • Proficiency in at least one modern backend language and framework (e.g., Go, Python/Django or Flask/FastAPI, Java/Spring, Ruby/Rails, or Node.js/Express).
  • Hands-on experience designing and operating RESTful or gRPC APIs and microservices in production.
  • Strong working knowledge of relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and caching/NoSQL stores (e.g., Redis, DynamoDB); ability to write and optimize SQL.
  • Experience collaborating with Product and Data Science to build data-informed features and iterate based on experiment results.
  • Experience deploying and operating services on a public cloud (e.g., AWS, GCP) and working with containers (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) or similar orchestration.
  • Demonstrated ability to write clean, maintainable code; strong debugging skills; and solid testing practices (unit/integration).
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience with experimentation platforms and A/B testing frameworks, including experiment design, instrumentation, and analysis.
  • Frontend or mobile development experience (e.g., React/TypeScript, React Native, Swift, or Kotlin) and comfort collaborating across the stack.
  • Exposure to event-driven architectures and analytics tooling (e.g., Kafka or Pub/Sub, feature flag systems, Looker, Amplitude, or similar).
  • Experience with performance optimization and observability at scale (e.g., profiling, caching strategies, SLOs, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
  • Comfort thriving in a fast-paced, experimentation-heavy environment with ambiguity, rapid iteration, and frequent learning cycles.
  • Exposure to AI-assisted development and agentic coding workflows.
  • Domain experience in coupon or growth systems.

#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. Currently, we are only hiring in the following provinces: Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia.

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 Canadian based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.

CAN

$168,000-$177,500 CAD

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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