
Data Engineering Manager, Core Experience & Incentives
Instacart
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Remote
Location: California • Colorado • United States
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Salary
💰 $183,000 - $232,000 per year
About the role
- Own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for Core DE and CoreX/Incentives DE to deliver high-quality batch and streaming pipelines, trusted datasets, and scalable data models for mission-critical product and analytics use cases.
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of 7 data engineers, creating growth opportunities, establishing clear goals and accountability, and hiring to scale as needs evolve.
- Define and enforce engineering excellence standards for data modeling, testing, data quality, documentation, observability, SLAs, and cost/performance optimization.
- Partner with DSA, ML, Product, and SWE to establish clear data contracts and deliver well-documented, versioned, and discoverable datasets that power experimentation, incentives, and marketplace operations.
- Drive the centralization of data engineering by creating and iterating on intake and engagement models, migrating pipelines from product teams where appropriate, and measuring impact through clear OKRs.
- Ensure strong governance and reliability through incident response, root cause analysis, prevention plans, and adherence to privacy, security, and compliance standards.
- Communicate status, risks, and tradeoffs with clarity and candor to stakeholders and leadership, fostering alignment and predictable delivery.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in data engineering building and operating production-grade data pipelines and platforms.
- 2+ years of experience directly managing data engineering teams with full people leadership responsibilities (hiring, performance, and career development).
- Proficiency in SQL and at least one programming language used for data engineering (Python or Scala).
- Hands-on experience with distributed processing and streaming technologies (e.g., Spark, Kafka, or Flink).
- Experience with modern cloud data warehouses and lakehouse architectures (e.g., BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks, or Redshift).
- Experience orchestrating pipelines with tools such as Airflow, Dagster, or similar.
- Strong background in data modeling (dimensional and normalized), data quality frameworks, and automated testing.
- Proven success partnering cross-functionally with Product, Data Science, and Software Engineering to deliver end-to-end data solutions against clear SLAs/OKRs.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Benefits
- Health insurance
- 401(k) matching
- Flexible work arrangements
- Professional development opportunities
- New hire equity grants
- Annual refresh grants
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard Skills & Tools
data engineeringdata pipelinesSQLPythonScalaSparkKafkaFlinkdata modelingautomated testing
Soft Skills
leadershipcoachingcommunicationgoal settingaccountabilitycollaborationrisk managementclaritycandoralignment
Certifications
Bachelor’s degree in Computer ScienceBachelor’s degree in EngineeringBachelor’s degree in Mathematicsequivalent practical experience