Senior Software Engineer, Data Governance – Foundations

Instacart

Senior Software Engineer managing data governance and data infrastructure for Instacart, collaborating with various teams to optimize large-scale data processing systems.

Posted 5/30/2026full-timeRemote • California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $166,000 - $210,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

ApacheDistributed SystemsKafkaPostgresSpark

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Define and drive multi-year architecture roadmaps for large-scale data ingestion and processing infrastructure, setting technical direction that balances reliability, scalability, and cost.
Own end-to-end platform initiatives — from build vs. buy decisions and migration design through production rollout and risk management — across Kafka-based streaming and Postgres-based systems.
Partner with vendors (Snowflake, Databricks, Confluent) on technical integration, contract evaluation, and TCO modeling to inform infrastructure investment decisions.
Collaborate with various teams to embed governance and compliance controls (SOX, CPRA, GDPR) directly into platform architecture and data lifecycle management.
Optimize infrastructure spend at scale: identify cost reduction opportunities across compute, storage, and pipeline efficiency; manage multi-million dollar infrastructure budgets.
Write compelling architecture documents, strategy memos, and proposals that drive alignment with engineering leadership and senior stakeholders across the organization.
Mentor engineers on the team, model strong engineering culture, and help grow a high-performing data infrastructure organization.
Collaborate with Data Science, ML Platform, Ads Infrastructure, Finance Engineering, and Product teams to ensure the platform meets evolving needs.

Requirements

What you’ll need

5+ years of software engineering focused on data infrastructure or distributed systems at scale, in a high-growth, data-intensive environment.
Experience in modern data lakehouse architectures and open table formats — Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi — with strong understanding of compute/storage trade-offs.
Hands-on experience with distributed query and compute systems (Trino, Spark, ClickHouse) including performance tuning and production reliability work.
Proven depth in event-driven infrastructure: Kafka for high-throughput data ingestion and Flink (or equivalent) for stream processing at scale.
Track record owning and executing major platform transitions, including migration design, phased rollout, and risk management under production constraints.
Experience building business cases for infrastructure investments: cost-benefit analysis, TCO modeling, and presenting recommendations to leadership.
Exceptional written technical communication — clear architecture docs, strategy memos, and cross-team proposals that drive decisions and alignment.
Strong ownership and comfort operating in ambiguity; ability to drive large, multi-team initiatives from concept to production with organizational influence.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Health insurance
401(k) matching
Flexible work hours
Paid time off
Remote work options

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

data ingestiondata processingKafkaPostgresSnowflakeDatabricksApache IcebergDelta LakeHudiTrino

Soft Skills

mentoringtechnical communicationorganizational influencecollaborationownershiprisk managementcost-benefit analysisstrategic thinkingalignmentproblem-solving