Senior Software Engineer, Enterprise AI

Overview

Instacart is transforming the grocery industry by building technology that helps people access the food they love while enabling retailers, brands, and shoppers to thrive. The Enterprise AI team develops intelligent systems and capabilities that support Instacart’s business and teams across the company.

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Enterprise AI team and help build reliable, scalable AI-powered solutions. You will work with engineers, product partners, data scientists, and stakeholders across the organization to turn complex business needs into high-quality products and platforms.

This is an opportunity to work on technically challenging problems with broad company impact. You will be expected to take ownership, collaborate across disciplines, and deliver thoughtful solutions in a fast-paced environment where priorities evolve as we learn. The Enterprise AI team is a collaborative group of approximately 14 people, and your work will contribute to the continued growth of Instacart’s AI capabilities.

About the Job

• Design, develop, test, and operate scalable software systems that power Enterprise AI products and capabilities.
• Translate ambiguous business and technical problems into clear engineering solutions, making thoughtful tradeoffs across quality, speed, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
• Collaborate with product managers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and partner teams to deliver AI-enabled experiences that address meaningful business needs.
• Own projects through the full software development lifecycle, from technical design and implementation through launch, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
• Contribute to engineering excellence through code reviews, design discussions, automated testing, observability, documentation, and operational best practices.
• Help shape the technical direction of the Enterprise AI team by identifying opportunities, evaluating new approaches, and sharing knowledge with teammates and cross-functional partners.

You will be working in a dynamic environment where requirements may change and the most valuable path forward is not always obvious. Success in this role requires comfort with ambiguity, a willingness to investigate problems deeply, and the judgment to make progress while maintaining a high bar for quality and reliability.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least five years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production systems.
• Proficiency in at least one modern programming language, such as Python, Java, Go, or C++.
• Experience designing, implementing, testing, and troubleshooting distributed or highly scalable software systems.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional partners to define requirements and deliver software from concept through production.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate technical decisions clearly, participate in constructive code and design reviews, and take ownership of complex projects.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI- or machine learning-enabled products, platforms, or developer tools.
• Experience with large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, intelligent automation, model serving, or related Enterprise AI technologies.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure, data platforms, APIs, distributed systems, and production observability.
• Experience improving the reliability, performance, security, or cost efficiency of software systems at scale.
• Ability to lead technical projects, mentor engineers, and influence decisions across organizational boundaries.
• Experience working effectively in a fast-changing environment where priorities, requirements, and technical approaches evolve over time.