Staff Software Engineer, Data Governance & Foundations

ABOUT THE ROLE We're seeking a highly skilled Staff Software Engineer to join our Data Governance and Foundations Team at Instacart. As a key member of our Data Infrastructure organization, you'll play a critical role in shaping the backbone of our data platform, driving innovation, and ensuring the reliability and scalability of our systems. WHAT YOU'LL DO As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll be responsible for owning the architecture and delivery of our open lakehouse foundation, governance and access patterns, and multi-engine compute strategy. You'll collaborate closely with engineering leadership and stakeholders across various teams to drive real-time and streaming infrastructure for critical use cases, pioneer AI-native data infrastructure engineering, and elevate engineering excellence. You'll translate Instacart's data strategy into an actionable multi-year architecture roadmap, align with leadership, and evolve the platform for scale, maturity, and cost efficiency. You'll drive real-time and streaming infrastructure for critical use cases, set deployment patterns, SLAs, and operational practices that balance performance, availability, and spend. You'll also pioneer AI-native data infrastructure engineering by applying LLM/AI tools to the platform lifecycle, accelerating development, automation, observability, and cost optimization. You'll partner to embed AI-powered capabilities into the platform and elevate engineering excellence by leading architecture reviews, mentoring senior/staff engineers, influencing hiring, and clearly communicating complex trade-offs to both technical and executive audiences. WHAT YOU'LL NEED To succeed in this role, you'll need 10+ years of software engineering experience building and operating data infrastructure or distributed systems at production scale. You'll require hands-on expertise with modern data lakehouse architectures and open table formats, distributed query/compute engines, event-driven and streaming infrastructure, and proven ownership of major platform transitions or migrations. You'll also need the ability to build cost/benefit and TCO models for infrastructure investments and drive alignment via clear architecture docs and strategy memos across multiple teams and leadership levels. A Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience is preferred. WHY REMOTE Instacart is a Flex First team that values flexibility and remote work. You'll have the opportunity to choose where you do your best work, whether it's from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop, while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events. BENEFITS Instacart offers a comprehensive benefits package, including health insurance, parental leave, education stipend, life insurance, and flexible schedule. You'll also have access to a range of professional development opportunities and a competitive salary.