Instacart

Senior Strategic Finance Manager, Retailer

Instacart$176K — $185K *
US-AnywhereRemote in Canada
Finance & Insurance
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years in strategic finance or similar fields, focusing on deal flow and business partnerships.
  • Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business, or Mathematics.
  • Proven experience managing complex commercial agreements from start to finish.
  • History of negotiating with C-suite and VP-level executives.
  • Advanced financial modeling capabilities using Excel or Google Sheets.
  • Strong understanding of accounting and unit economics for P&L analysis.
  • Excellent communication skills for presenting to senior executives.

Responsibilities

  • Lead financial strategy for retailer partnerships, shaping pricing philosophy and decision frameworks.
  • Develop financial modeling standards for high-volume retailer agreements.
  • Define and operationalize Instacart's pricing guardrails for senior negotiations.
  • Establish live partner and portfolio-level P&Ls with clear KPIs for performance assessment.
  • Implement scalable deal desk processes and pricing frameworks across Retailer organization.
  • Create self-serve dashboards for quantifying trade-offs and accelerating decisions.
  • Elevate team performance by fostering strong analytical and business judgment standards.

Benefits

  • Remote work flexibility with a comprehensive benefits package.
  • Potential for new hire equity grant and annual refresh grants.
  • Highly competitive compensation structure based on experience and work location.
Full Job Description
Why this role is on the menu

Instacart's Strategic Finance team partners across the business to drive disciplined growth and long-term value creation. Within this group, the Retailer pod supports our Retail Partnerships organization as we expand and deepen relationships with grocers and retailers across North America.

In this role you will be the finance lead for retailer deal flow-setting financial strategy, shaping pricing philosophy, and driving portfolio-level decision-making across the full lifecycle of retailer partnerships. You will develop decision frameworks, build robust models, and advise senior leaders through high-stakes negotiations that shape Instacart's revenue and margin profile. This is an individual contributor role to start, with a clear path to people management as the team grows. This person will report to the Director of Retailer Finance.

The ideal candidate brings deep deal and business development finance experience-ideally from a marketplace, platform, or consumer internet company-and is comfortable operating at the intersection of finance and commercial strategy. You will collaborate closely with Partnerships, Legal, Revenue Operations, Accounting, Product, Deal Desk, Data Science, and Analytics. This is a high-visibility, cross-functional role on a lean team that is ideal for someone who thrives in ambiguity, rolls up their sleeves, and communicates with clarity and conviction. We work together, move quickly, and put facts and transparency on the table to make the best decisions for our customers, shoppers, retailers, brands, and partners.

What you'll cook up in your first year
  • Financial modeling standards for retailer partnerships are in place, covering revenue share, incentives, ads, and fulfillment economics, with executive-ready outputs delivered consistently across a high-volume pipeline.
  • Instacart's pricing philosophy and deal guardrails are defined and operational, with you serving as the senior finance voice from term sheet through signature with C-suite and VP-level counterparts.
  • Partner- and portfolio-level P&Ls and forecasts are live with clear KPIs, enabling reliable performance reviews with Retail Partnerships leadership.
  • A scalable deal desk process, pricing architecture, and rate card framework are adopted across the Retailer organization, setting the standard for speed, consistency, and compliance.
  • Self-serve dashboards are live and actively used to quantify tradeoffs, surface risks, and accelerate investment decisions.
  • A portfolio-level investment evaluation framework is in place, with clear theses, measurement plans, and success criteria enabling confident go/no-go decisions with senior leadership.
  • Analysts and managers in the pod are operating at a higher bar-stronger modeling rigor, sharper business judgment, and a culture of ownership that elevates the team's executive storytelling.


The secret ingredients we're looking for

Must-have pantry staples (Minimum Qualifications)
  • 8 or more years of recent experience in strategic finance, corporate finance, investment banking, private equity, or management consulting, with significant time spent directly supporting deal flow, business development, or commercial partnerships.
  • Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business, Mathematics, or equivalent practical experience.
  • Deep, hands-on deal experience: a track record of owning the finance workstream across a high volume of complex commercial agreements end-to-end, from initial scoping and pricing through negotiation, signature, and post-close performance tracking.
  • Experience as the senior finance partner in negotiations with C-suite and VP-level executives, both internally and externally, structuring contract terms that balance growth and unit economics across a fast-moving pipeline.
  • Advanced financial modeling skills in Excel or Google Sheets, including multi-scenario and sensitivity analyses for complex, multi-year agreements.
  • Strong command of accounting fundamentals and unit economics; ability to build, reconcile, and present partner- and portfolio-level P&Ls and cash flow impacts to executive audiences.
  • Ability to communicate complex analyses and recommendations with clarity and conviction to senior executives in written and verbal formats.


Optional garnishes (Preferred Qualifications)
  • MBA or relevant advanced degree.
  • Experience at a marketplace, platform, gig economy, grocery delivery, or consumer internet company with complex, multi-party commercial partnership structures, ideally where the business model depends on signing and retaining external supply- or demand-side partners.
  • 2 or more years of direct people management experience, with a track record of developing high-performing analysts and managers.
  • Proficiency in SQL and familiarity with BI tools and building AI workflows.
  • Experience building and owning pricing frameworks, rate card architecture, and enterprise-scale deal desk processes.
  • Familiarity with revenue recognition and partnership accounting considerations for multi-element arrangements.
  • Demonstrated success managing a fast-moving pipeline with multiple concurrent deals and cross-functional stakeholders.

#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

$176,000-$185,500 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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