Instacart

Staff Android Engineer, Pick & Deliver

Instacart • $229K — $241K *
US-AnywhereRemote in Canada
Consumer Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with a focus on Android applications.
  • Proficient in Kotlin and modern Android development practices including Jetpack Compose, Coroutines, and RxJava.
  • Experience in leading complex, cross-functional software projects from design to production.
  • Strong expertise in designing maintainable Android architecture and enhancing application performance.
  • Proven track record in collaborating effectively with product and design teams and external stakeholders.
  • Excellent communication skills to articulate technical decisions and trade-offs clearly.

Responsibilities

  • Lead technical direction and execution of Android applications supporting retailers and shoppers.
  • Design, build, test, and maintain high-quality Android apps using Kotlin and other modern technologies.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop solutions for operational and customer needs.
  • Own projects from discovery through delivery, balancing immediate priorities with long-term platform goals.
  • Enhance app performance and reliability through architectural improvements and technical debt reduction.
  • Provide technical leadership by facilitating design discussions and mentoring engineers.
  • Contribute to a roadmap for new picking models and platform investments.

Benefits

  • Flexible remote work policy.
  • Highly competitive compensation structure.
  • Equity grants for new hires and annual refresh grants.
  • Health and wellness benefits.
Full Job Description
Overview

Instacart is transforming the grocery industry by helping people access the food they love while enabling retailers, brands, and shoppers to succeed. The Pick & Deliver organization builds the technology that powers critical in-store and delivery operations across the Instacart marketplace.

We are seeking an Android Engineer to serve as a technical lead within the Pick & Deliver organization. You will help shape and deliver high-visibility mobile experiences that support retailers throughout the process of picking customer orders, directly influencing the speed, quality, and reliability of the end-user experience.

This role offers the opportunity to work on complex, high-impact challenges across multiple retailer priorities, new picking models, market expansion, and platform-scale investments. You will partner closely with Product, Design, Backend Engineering, iOS Engineering, retailers, external vendors, and other internal teams to turn operational needs into reliable, intuitive mobile experiences.

The team works in a fast-paced environment with parallel feature development, retailer requests, and technical debt. Success requires strong ownership, sound technical judgment, and a willingness to collaborate, make decisions, and roll up your sleeves to solve problems that have immediate and meaningful impact.
About the Job
  • Lead the technical direction and execution of Android experiences that support retailers and shoppers across all phases of picking an order.
  • Design, build, test, and maintain high-quality Android applications using modern technologies including Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Coroutines, and RxJava.
  • Partner with Product, Design, Backend Engineering, iOS Engineering, retailers, and external vendors to define solutions for complex operational and customer needs.
  • Own projects from technical discovery through delivery, balancing immediate retailer priorities with long-term platform health, scalability, and maintainability.
  • Improve application performance, reliability, observability, and developer experience through profiling, instrumentation, architectural improvements, and thoughtful technical debt reduction.
  • Provide technical leadership across the Pick & Deliver organization by facilitating design discussions, mentoring engineers, establishing engineering best practices, and helping teams make clear, durable decisions.
  • Contribute to a roadmap that includes new picking models, expansion to additional retailers and markets, and investments in the Android platform and operational scale.

This is a highly collaborative role in a changing environment. Priorities may shift as retailer needs, product opportunities, and operational challenges evolve, so you should be comfortable navigating ambiguity, communicating tradeoffs, and maintaining high standards while delivering against time-sensitive goals.
About You
Minimum Qualifications
  • At least 7 years of professional software engineering experience, including substantial experience developing and shipping Android applications.
  • Strong proficiency in Kotlin and demonstrated experience with modern Android development practices, including Jetpack Compose, Coroutines, and reactive programming with RxJava or an equivalent framework.
  • Experience leading the technical execution of complex, cross-functional software projects from design through production launch.
  • Experience designing maintainable Android architectures and improving application performance, reliability, testing, monitoring, or observability.
  • Demonstrated ability to partner effectively with Product, Design, Backend Engineering, iOS Engineering, and external stakeholders to deliver customer-facing products.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical decisions, align stakeholders, and communicate risks and tradeoffs clearly.
Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience building mobile products for retail, logistics, fulfillment, delivery, workforce, or other operational environments.
  • Experience supporting multiple product teams, retailers, markets, or high-priority initiatives at the same time.
  • Experience with Android performance profiling, application startup optimization, crash reduction, instrumentation, or large-scale observability.
  • Experience contributing to mobile platform strategy, shared components, developer tooling, or migration to modern Android technologies.
  • Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction across teams without direct authority.
  • Experience working with external partners, vendors, or enterprise customers to understand operational needs and deliver reliable solutions.

#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

$229,000-$241,500 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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