You are a senior technical leader who designs and ships scalable, data‑intensive systems; drives cross‑team execution; and raises engineering standards. You’ll partner closely with Product, Data Science, Data Platform, and Governance teams to build reusable abstractions and deliver high‑impact features across our pillars: Off‑platform, Data collaboration (cleanrooms), Ads Taxonomy, Platform, and New Initiatives (AI). You will mentor L4/L5 engineers, act as an IC tech lead (no direct reports), and help define a future on‑call model and SLOs.
About the Job
Technical leadership and roadmap
Lead architecture for reusable, scalable systems across off‑platform workflows, cleanrooms, taxonomy automation, and the Ads Data Solutions Platform.
Evolve core abstractions, testing, CI/CD, observability, and cost efficiency; proactively drive modernization.
Propose and drive initiatives on behalf of engineering management; align stakeholders and manage dependencies.
Pillar execution
Off‑platform: expand and harden integrations with external advertising platforms; design privacy-forward activation and identity workflows; reduce reliance on third-party intermediaries; and build measurement ingestion pipelines for performance signals such as reach, frequency, and conversions.
Data collaboration (cleanrooms): extend our cleanroom orchestration and governance tooling (multi-cleanroom support, policy enforcement), develop reusable query templates and partner configurations, optimize pipelines for cost and performance, and scale secure data collaboration deployment and management.
Ads Taxonomy: lead intake automation (UI + backend) and release workflow improvements to reduce manual effort and cycle time.
Platform: assist with platform modernization and developer tooling improvements; contribute to an on‑call/SLO strategy as we mature operations.
AI‑first engineering
Use AI‑assisted tools daily for design, coding, tests, and docs; define team prompt patterns and workflows; identify AI opportunities in internal tools and ops.
Product quality, privacy, and security
Translate ambiguous requirements into pragmatic phases (POC, pilot, production) with clear SLAs/SLOs.
Champion security‑by‑design, data governance, and privacy compliance (e.g., GDPR/CCPA) across pipelines.
Mentorship and collaboration
Mentor engineers up to L5; set code quality and review standards.
Build cross‑team partnerships (Ads Manager, Measurement Science, Data Platform, Privacy/Legal, and external platforms).
About You
Minimum Qualifications
Proven senior‑level impact
8+ years of software engineering experience (typically 10+ for this level) delivering and operating large‑scale backend/data systems; led cross‑team projects and architectural decisions.
Backend and data engineering
Strong in Python and one of Ruby or Go; services/APIs (REST/gRPC); integrations with third‑party APIs (e.g., Meta, Google, The Trade Desk).
Data pipelines with DBT and Airflow; Spark/Databricks; advanced SQL and performance tuning.
Snowflake and AWS experience; cost‑aware design; workflow orchestration (e.g., Temporal) and event‑driven patterns.
Ads/cleanrooms/privacy
Experience with ad‑tech/programmatic and measurement integrations; cleanrooms (Snowflake DCR, shares/listings); identity/matching (UID2, RampID) and deconfliction.
Working knowledge of privacy and compliance practices (GDPR/CCPA) in data workflows.
Platform excellence
CI/CD, containers, test strategy; observability (metrics/logs/tracing) with tools like Datadog; incident readiness and SLO thinking.
AI fluency (must‑have)
Demonstrated, recent hands-on use of AI‑assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, OpenAI‑based assistants) to improve speed and quality.
Experience defining reusable prompts/workflows for team use and contributing to AI‑enabled internal tools or automation.
Ability to evaluate when to apply AI vs. deterministic systems; familiarity with evaluation, guardrails, and security/privacy implications in AI usage.
Collaboration and communication
Clear technical writing; stakeholder management; ability to drive consensus and unblock execution.
Preferred Qualifications
Direct experience with UID2/TTD integrations, Roku/Pubmatic/NBCU, or Meta Advanced Analytics/Google ADH pipelines.
Catalog/taxonomy, entity lineage, or custom hierarchy systems.
Snowflake governance patterns, partner data collaboration at scale.
Vendor/partner management and external API certification programs.
Building AI‑powered internal tools (e.g., Slackbots, data assistants).
Why this role is a great opportunity....
Lead foundational, high‑visibility initiatives and translate them into measurable impact on revenue, efficiency, and partner adoption.
Co‑own the technical roadmap with scope to define abstractions, standards, and AI‑first workflows across multiple pillars.
Ship impactful features end‑to‑end: direct UID2 activation, Share Manager extensions, taxonomy intake automation, and platform modernization.
Collaborate with strong cross‑functional partners and enjoy occasional trips to our Toronto office to connect with the broader engineering community.
Help define our future on‑call model and operational excellence standards as we scale.
#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
$196,000—$207,000 CAD
