Senior Software Engineer (Ads Data Solutions Engineering)

Join Instacart's Ads Data Solutions Engineering team as a Senior Software Engineer. 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 lead architecture for reusable, scalable systems. This position requires strong experience in software engineering, data systems, and AI-assisted development tools.

• Co-own the technical roadmap, modernize data solutions infrastructure, and scale off-platform integrations and measurement capabilities.
• 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.

• 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
• Demonstrated, recent hands-on use of AI‑assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, OpenAI‑based assistants) to improve speed and quality
• Ability to evaluate when to apply AI vs. deterministic systems; familiarity with evaluation, guardrails, and security/privacy implications in AI usage
• Working knowledge of privacy and compliance practices (GDPR/CCPA) in data workflows
• Snowflake and AWS experience; cost‑aware design; workflow orchestration (e.g., Temporal) and event‑driven patterns
• 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
• 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)
• Clear technical writing; stakeholder management; ability to drive consensus and unblock execution
• Experience defining reusable prompts/workflows for team use and contributing to AI‑enabled internal tools or automation
• Experience with ad‑tech/programmatic and measurement integrations; cleanrooms (Snowflake DCR, shares/listings); identity/matching (UID2, RampID) and deconfliction
• Building AI‑powered internal tools (e.g., Slackbots, data assistants)
• Vendor/partner management and external API certification programs
• Snowflake governance patterns, partner data collaboration at scale
• Catalog/taxonomy, entity lineage, or custom hierarchy systems
• Direct experience with UID2/TTD integrations, Roku/Pubmatic/NBCU, or Meta Advanced Analytics/Google ADH pipelines