Staff Software Engineer, Shopper Activation & Engagement

We're transforming the grocery industry At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers. Instacart has become a lifeline for millions of people, and we’re building the team to help push our shopping cart forward. If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, come join our table. Instacart is a Flex First team There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work. Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their best work—whether it’s from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop—while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work. Overview Instacart’s Shopper Activation & Engagement team owns the complete shopper lifecycle—from activation and onboarding through engagement, earnings, quality and ratings, recognition, retention, and safety. Our mission is to help millions of shoppers get started, succeed, and thrive on our marketplace while ensuring compliance and operational excellence. We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to serve as the Activation Domain Tech Lead. In this role, you’ll define the technical strategy and architecture for critical shopper activation surfaces such as onboarding funnel optimization, waitlist management, supply levers, and compliance systems. You’ll partner closely with Product, Design, Data Science, Operations, Legal, Trust & Safety, and key onboarding vendors to deliver fast, safe, and scalable solutions. This is a high-impact role where your work directly influences shopper supply, marketplace efficiency, and our ability to scale sustainably while maintaining quality and regulatory standards. If you thrive in fast-moving, highly cross-functional environments and enjoy rolling up your sleeves to solve complex problems at scale, you’ll feel right at home here. We go far together, communicate with candor, and prioritize solutions where everyone can win. About the Job Define and drive the end-to-end technical strategy and architecture for the activation domain, enabling rapid, safe delivery as the roadmap scales to support millions of shoppers. Lead product strategy in partnership with Product and Design across onboarding funnel optimization, waitlist management, incentives, and supply levers; set clear OKRs, instrumentation, and experimentation plans. Own delivery of business-critical compliance and vendor initiatives (e.g., background checks, identity/eligibility workflows), building auditable, privacy-first systems with strong observability and SLAs. Run large, cross-functional programs across multiple engineering and business teams; translate ambiguous requirements into crisp technical plans, manage risk and dependencies, and unblock execution. Mentor and develop engineers through design reviews, high-quality code practices, and clear technical standards; raise the technical bar and cultivate the next generation of technical leaders. Continuously improve reliability, performance, and cost efficiency of services; establish and enforce SLOs, drive incident learnings, and champion secure-by-default, AI-augmented development workflows. About You Minimum Qualifications 10+ years of software engineering experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems, high-traffic services, or mobile backends. 3+ years owning end-to-end architecture and technical strategy for a domain or product area, from design through production operations. Proven track record leading cross-functional initiatives across 3+ teams and delivering under hard deadlines in ambiguous problem spaces. Proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Go, Java, Python) and with modern cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS or GCP) and data stores (e.g., Postgres, DynamoDB, Redis). Hands-on experience building AI tooling or agentic automation and integrating AI into developer workflows or product features. Experience designing compliant systems involving identity, eligibility, certifications, or similarly sensitive workflows, with privacy and security best practices. Demonstrated mentorship and team development experience, including leveling up engineers through design guidance and rigorous code reviews. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Preferred Qualifications Experience partnering with Legal/Policy on compliance-related projects and navigating evolving labor or regulatory requirements; familiarity with audit trails and policy engines. Background in evaluating, integrating, and managing third-party vendors; establishing technical SLAs; and executing zero-downtime migrations and fallback strategies. Experience with experimentation platforms, analytics, and growth funnels to improve conversion, supply availability, and utilization. Experience building mobile-first products or collaborating closely with iOS/Android teams on shopper experiences. Familiarity with trust & safety, fraud/identity, or background screening systems in high-scale marketplaces. Experience in marketplace, logistics, rideshare, or gig-economy environments. #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 . 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 rea d more about our benefits offerings here . For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below. CA, NY, CT, NJ $265,000 — $279,500 USD WA $254,000 — $268,000 USD OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI $243,000 — $256,500 USD All other states $221,000 — $233,000 USD