Senior Engineering Manager

Summary

Join Instacart as a Senior Engineering Manager for the Retailer Discovery Experience team and lead a growing team in building innovative, scalable, and reliable systems. You will define the team's technical strategy, guide engineers in best practices, and champion a strong team culture. This role involves partnering with cross-functional leaders and stakeholders to deliver high-quality systems that enhance user experience and drive marketplace growth. You will own highly visible, business-critical surfaces and contribute to Instacart's affordability, user satisfaction, and product visibility goals. The team focuses on retailer discovery, cross-retailer search, and home feed curation. This is a remote position with competitive compensation and benefits.

Requirements

• Proven experience as a hands-on technical leader or engineering manager in a high-growth, fast-paced environment
• 4+ years managing teams of 10+ engineers
• Proficiency in designing and executing multi-year engineering roadmaps
• Familiarity with engineering excellence metrics (incidents, bugs, latency, scalability, quality assurance) and a track record of defining engineering quality north stars and holding teams accountable to outcomes
• Experience partnering with PM, data science, design, and ML to deliver on time-sensitive and high-visibility initiatives
• Exceptional communication skills, with a focus on structured, clarity-first communication across stakeholders
• Experience mentoring talent, fostering team health, and creating a positive engineering culture

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate the team’s technical strategy in alignment with company-wide product objectives
• Drive the vision for long-term architectural investments and execution excellence
• Create high-impact roadmaps for systems that optimize for scalability, performance, and user experience
• Guide engineers in adopting best practices for design, development, and scalability
• Ensure delivery of high-quality systems with clear expectations on metrics like latency, incidents, reliability, and product polish
• Partner with cross-functional leaders (PM, ML, DS) to manage time-sensitive business needs and execute innovative projects
• Champion a strong team culture, where engineers take pride in their work and find growth opportunities
• Manage team health, performance, and career development through 1:1 coaching, feedback, and mentorship
• Lead hiring to grow an inclusive, high-performing team aligned with Instacart’s goals
• Foster cross-team alignment by building relationships with Product, Design, Data Science, and Marketing peers
• Act as a liaison for your team to represent ongoing progress, challenges, and solutions at the leadership and organizational level

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical expertise at the Staff+ level, with a background in systems architecture and scalable backend infrastructure
• Strong background in full-stack or backend systems, with knowledge of API design for client integrations
• Familiarity or experience working with Machine Learning-focused products
• Experience balancing urgent business goals with long-term technical strategy
• Ability to lead in high-pressure, high-visibility situations while creating stability for the team

Benefits

• Highly market-competitive compensation and benefits
• New hire equity grant
• Annual refresh grants