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
The Marketing Platform Tooling team builds and maintains the core backend systems that power all of Instacart's marketing capabilities. At the center of this work are two production-scale platforms: our targeting platform, which resolves a large and growing library of audience segments to reach the right customers with the right content at the right time, and our CRM messaging platform, which reliably delivers millions of personalized messages a day across Instacart. Together, these systems form the foundation for how Instacart drives growth, engagement, and retention at scale.
You will build shared, composable foundations designed to serve as the backbone for the entire marketing platform space. This is greenfield infrastructure work with direct visibility into Instacart's most critical company priorities, including Enterprise expansion, Lifecycle marketing, and platform Efficiency and Quality.
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join this team in Toronto as a dedicated backend owner. This is a net new role, and you'll be stepping into a high-ownership position with real scope, real urgency, and a roadmap that ladders directly into business outcomes. If you're energized by building sustainable platforms at scale, running workstreams end-to-end, and making a measurable difference on systems other teams depend on, this is the role for you.
About the Job
Data ingestion and processing pipelines, both real-time streaming and batch, that keep targeting data fresh and accurate.
Segment evaluation and matching services that resolve audiences on demand for many downstream consumers.
A high-volume, reliable messaging and delivery pipeline that ensures accurate, timely, personalized sends at scale.
The shared, composable backbone and APIs these capabilities are built on, with a strong focus on observability, testing, and uptime.
Architect, build, and maintain excellent backend applications with clean code.
Help shape the technical direction and roadmap of our targeting and CRM platforms.
Design and operate real-time and batch data pipelines and distributed services built for reliability and scale.
Contribute to the shared, composable backbone that these systems are built on.
Own important pieces of the platform that have high visibility internally.
Communicate and collaborate extensively across teams and functions to drive consensus and align goals.
Be empowered and responsible for planning, decision-making, shipping, and maintaining your surface areas.
About You
Minimum Qualifications
5+ years of backend development experience with a proven track record of success.
Expertise in backend languages, specifically Ruby and Go (experience with Python is a plus).
Solid understanding of Rails or Pandas.
Experience designing scalable, reliable distributed systems, with databases (SQL/NoSQL) and data pipelines (batch and streaming).
Proven ability in rigorous unit testing and practical problem-solving.
Excellent communication and leadership skills, capable of collaborating with and influencing cross-functional teams.
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
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 CAD
Instacart is a grocery delivery platform that brings fresh groceries and everyday essentials to customers across the US and Canada from nearly 55,000 stores across 5,500 markets. Founded in 2012, the company focuses on making grocery delivery convenient, affordable, and accessible to everyone. Instacart leverages machine learning and Internet-scale data to power intelligent shopping experiences, including state-of-the-art models for Search, Discovery, and Ads that combine generative AI with traditional machine learning. The company also innovates across e-commerce, advertising, and fulfillment, and is developing cutting-edge products like Cart Assistant, a conversational shopping agent, and hyperpersonalized marketing solutions. Their mission is to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together.
