Principal Software/Machine Learning Engineer

Summary

Join Instacart's Ads Engineering team as a seasoned ML engineering leader and Area Tech Lead of Ads Quality. You will contribute to AI/ML innovations, lead the team in designing next-generation solutions, and partner with leadership to prioritize product needs. This role involves developing company-defining collaborations, mentoring engineers, and shaping engineering culture. You will develop and design innovative AI-powered systems addressing Ads Quality challenges, define the technical strategy and roadmap, and serve as a technical leader and mentor. This is a hands-on individual contributor/technical lead role at the Director+ level with no people management expectations.

Requirements

• PhD in AI / ML or related field, or equivalent academic and research experience
• 15+ years of experience as a software and / or ML engineer
• Proven track record of architecting & building production-grade ML systems, AI and quantitative optimization technologies at a global scale
• Proficiency in one or more relevant systems programming languages (e.g., Go, Rust or C++) and application programming languages (eg: Python or Ruby)
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical discussions and collaborate effectively at senior to executive levels, driving consensus and clarity
• Experience mentoring and developing engineering culture and talent

Responsibilities

• Develop & design innovative AI-powered systems addressing a wide range of Ads Quality challenges, such as: Optimize ads bidding, retrieval and auction processes toward a diverse set of advertiser goals, balancing short- and long-term objectives
• Balance between user, advertiser, and retailer needs, and turn such solutions into quantifiable, optimizable formulations
• Identify and build gen AI solutions to revolutionize all aspects of the quality stack
• Build advanced generative AI and recommendation frameworks revolutionizing advertiser experience and campaign efficacy
• Construct systems and frameworks to provide intelligent recommendations and assistance to advertisers
• Collaborate with Data Scientists to establish metrics and methodologies for both tracking, optimization, and goaling purposes
• Define & own the Ads Quality technical strategy and roadmap, balancing between both short-term needs and long-term sustainability
• Demonstrates ability to architect and design complex AI / quality components, considering scalability, reliability, performance, and security
• Serves as a technical leader and mentor, guiding and empowering junior ML and software engineers through code and design reviews, knowledge sharing, collaborative problem-solving, improving key engineering processes, and fostering a thriving engineering culture
• Serve as a technical mentor, empowering engineers at all career levels through effective coaching, collaborative code reviews and knowledge sharing to develop the next set of leaders
• Builds and maintains synergies with other ML engineering teams across Instacart; acts as a bridge representing Ads as an influential voice in company-wide technical forums
• Contributes to company-level technical initiatives as a thought leader and key driver of Instacart’s engineering vision & goals

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on expertise in building large-scale AI/ML systems bridging generative AI, predictive modeling, and recommendation engines to solve real-world problems
• Deep understanding of Ads Quality systems, including bidding, yield optimization, retrieval processes, and auction dynamics
• Familiar with AWS, Golang, Spark, Clickhouse, Snowflake, TensorFlow

Benefits

• Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work
• This role is remote
• This role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants
• CA, NY, CT, NJ $335,000 — $372,000 USD
• WA $321,000 — $357,000 USD
• OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI $308,000 — $342,000 USD
• All other states $278,000 — $309,000 USD