Senior Software Engineer (Ads Data Solutions Engineering)

Join Instacart as a Senior Software Engineer in the Ads Data Solutions Engineering team. In this pivotal role, you will co-own the technical roadmap, modernize data solutions infrastructure, scale off-platform integrations, and extend cleanroom collaboration capabilities. You will collaborate closely with various teams, mentor junior engineers, and drive initiatives on behalf of engineering management. This position requires a strong background in software engineering, data systems, and AI-assisted development tools.

• Co-own the technical roadmap, modernize data solutions infrastructure, and scale off-platform integrations.
• Lead architecture for reusable, scalable systems across off-platform workflows, cleanrooms, taxonomy automation, and the Ads Data Solutions Platform.
• Mentor L4/L5 engineers, act as an IC tech lead, and help define a future on-call model and SLOs.

• Proven senior‑level impact
• Ability to evaluate when to apply AI vs. deterministic systems; familiarity with evaluation, guardrails, and security/privacy implications in AI usage
• 8+ years of software engineering experience (typically 10+ for this level) delivering and operating large‑scale backend/data systems; led cross‑team projects and architectural decisions
• Collaboration and communication
• Demonstrated, recent hands-on use of AI‑assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, OpenAI‑based assistants) to improve speed and quality
• Snowflake and AWS experience; cost‑aware design; workflow orchestration (e.g., Temporal) and event‑driven patterns
• Working knowledge of privacy and compliance practices (GDPR/CCPA) in data workflows
• Experience defining reusable prompts/workflows for team use and contributing to AI‑enabled internal tools or automation
• Ads/cleanrooms/privacy
• Backend and data engineering
• Data pipelines with DBT and Airflow; Spark/Databricks; advanced SQL and performance tuning
• CI/CD, containers, test strategy; observability (metrics/logs/tracing) with tools like Datadog; incident readiness and SLO thinking
• Experience with ad‑tech/programmatic and measurement integrations; cleanrooms (Snowflake DCR, shares/listings); identity/matching (UID2, RampID) and deconfliction
• Clear technical writing; stakeholder management; ability to drive consensus and unblock execution
• Platform excellence
• Strong in Python and one of Ruby or Go; services/APIs (REST/gRPC); integrations with third‑party APIs (e.g., Meta, Google, The Trade Desk)
• AI fluency (must‑have)
• Direct experience with UID2/TTD integrations, Roku/Pubmatic/NBCU, or Meta Advanced Analytics/Google ADH pipelines
• Catalog/taxonomy, entity lineage, or custom hierarchy systems
• Snowflake governance patterns, partner data collaboration at scale
• Vendor/partner management and external API certification programs
• Building AI‑powered internal tools (e.g., Slackbots, data assistants)