OverviewInstacart is building the operating system for the grocery industry, and our FAI team develops the intelligence behind how orders are promised, picked, batched, and delivered. As a Senior Software Engineer II on FAI, you'll join a team of 14 engineers partnering closely with product, data science, machine learning, and operations to power real-time decisions that keep our marketplace running smoothly for customers, shoppers, and retail partners.
In this role, you will design, build, and operate scalable, low-latency services and data pipelines that directly affect customer experience and business outcomes at high scale. You'll have significant ownership across the stack-from architecture and implementation to reliability, observability, and on-call-while collaborating across disciplines to turn ideas into production systems.
This position is open to candidates across Canada, with a preference for those in or near Toronto. We value a culture that goes far together, rolls up sleeves to get the job done, and communicates with clarity and empathy-so you can do the best work of your career while helping millions get the groceries they love.
About the Job- Design, build, and operate resilient, low-latency microservices and data pipelines that power fulfillment planning, inventory availability, and delivery promises.
- Partner with machine learning and data science to productionize models and features, enable online experimentation, and continuously improve decision quality.
- Own services end-to-end, from technical design and RFCs through implementation, rollout, observability, and participation in an on-call rotation.
- Drive reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency through SLOs, capacity planning, incident reviews, and performance optimization.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Marketplace, and Operations to define roadmaps and deliver measurable customer and business impact.
- Mentor other engineers via code and design reviews, pair programming, and contributions to engineering best practices and standards.
About YouMinimum Qualifications- 6+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend services or distributed systems.
- Proficiency in at least one of the following languages: Go, Java, Python, or Scala.
- Hands-on experience designing and operating microservices on a major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure) using containers/orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Strong SQL skills and experience with event streaming and data stores (e.g., Kafka or Pub/Sub; Redis; PostgreSQL or MySQL).
- Proven ownership of production services, including observability (metrics, logging, tracing) and participation in an on-call rotation.
- Experience delivering in an agile environment and collaborating effectively with product managers, data scientists, and cross-functional partners.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience building real-time decisioning systems for logistics, marketplaces, ads, or e-commerce.
- Familiarity with ML feature stores, model serving, or experimentation platforms and A/B testing frameworks.
- Knowledge of algorithms and data structures relevant to optimization problems (e.g., routing, matching, forecasting).
- Experience with the GCP ecosystem (e.g., GKE, Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Cloud SQL) or equivalent services on other clouds.
- Demonstrated impact mentoring engineers and leading cross-team technical initiatives from concept to production.
- Comfort operating in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and iterating quickly based on data and user feedback.
#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 USD
