Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Instacart

. Translate Instacart’s data strategy into an actionable multi-year architecture roadmap.

Posted 4/3/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $221,000 - $279,500 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

ApacheDistributed SystemsKafka

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Translate Instacart’s data strategy into an actionable multi-year architecture roadmap.
Own the open lakehouse foundation defining and delivering unified table formats.
Drive real-time and streaming infrastructure for critical use cases.
Pioneer AI-native data infrastructure engineering by applying LLM/AI tools.
Elevate engineering excellence by leading architecture reviews and mentoring engineers.

Requirements

What you’ll need

5+ years of software engineering experience building and operating data infrastructure or distributed systems at production scale.
Hands-on expertise with modern data lakehouse architectures and open table formats (e.g., Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi).
Experience with event-driven and streaming infrastructure (e.g., Kafka, Flink) for real-time pipelines and serving systems.
Proven ownership of major platform transitions or migrations delivered to production.
Ability to build cost/benefit and TCO models for infrastructure investments.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive salary
Flexible work arrangements
New hire equity grant
Annual refresh grants

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

data infrastructuredistributed systemsdata lakehouse architectureopen table formatsApache IcebergDelta LakeHudievent-driven infrastructurestreaming infrastructurereal-time pipelines

Soft Skills

engineering excellenceleadershipmentoring