Full-Time Senior Software Engineer, Commerce Platform

We're transforming the grocery industry At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers. Instacart has become a lifeline for millions of people, and we’re building the team to help push our shopping cart forward. If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, come join our table.

Instacart is a Flex First team. There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work. Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their 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. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work.

Overview

About the role

We are looking for a collaborative and motivated senior software back-end engineer (L5) with a passion for system design. In this role, you will build performant and reliable systems to manage lifecycle processes for non-monetary value (e.g., credits and coupons) within Instacart’s Commerce platform. These systems power millions of incentive transactions that underpin our Affordability pillar, driving growth through high-visibility, high-impact projects. This position is ideal for strong owners who are deeply curious and eager to develop a comprehensive understanding of our domain and business priorities. You’ll use these insights to architect scalable, extensible solutions that adapt to an ever-expanding range of creative incentives-driven initiatives.

You’ll join a highly collaborative team of talented engineers who prioritize mentorship, shared growth, and continuous learning. We pride ourselves on a low-overhead, high-autonomy environment where productive design reviews and an outcome-driven approach are core pillars of our team culture.

About the job

• Implement robust back-end services and APIs, writing clean, maintainable, and efficient code.
• Optimize applications for peak performance and scalability.
• Validate the technical feasibility of system designs and contribute actively to all development lifecycle phases.
• Focus on operational excellence with strong test coverage, monitoring, intuitive metrics, and alerting.
• Design scalable and low-latency back-end architectures for high-volume incentive processing systems.
• Develop solutions that are extensible and can support new business initiatives effectively.
• Coordinate with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment of project goals and schedules.

About you

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering
• 5+ years with back-end development
• 3+ years with system design and architecture
• Proficient in backend languages like Ruby, Python, Java
• Experienced working with database systems such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or MySQL
• Experienced using caching mechanisms like Memcached or Redis
• Experience with high scale throughput and distributed systems problems.
• Strong ownership mindset

Preferred Qualifications

• Expertise in invoicing and billing processes within an e-commerce environment.
• Familiarity with relevant invoicing regulations and tax requirements.
• Experience with order management systems (OMS) or eCommerce platforms.
• Understanding of the overall eCommerce operations and processes involved in managing customer orders.
• Understanding of various payment systems and methods used in eCommerce.
• Familiarity with payment gateways and payment service providers (PSPs)
• Experience in eCommerce discounting, including a solid understanding of discount strategies.
• Good knowledge of pricing strategies, discount structures and ability to analyze the financial impact of different discount scenarios.
• Understanding of various payment systems and methods used in eCommerce.

Instacart's technology:

• Ruby on Rails framework using Sorbet
• Client-facing flexible APIs exposed via GraphQL
• Postgres and Snowflake backend relational data stores
• Temporal workflow
• Async durable event handling infrastructure
• Caching and durable job dispatching
• Auto-scaling elastic service deployments
• Rich monitoring and alerting infrastructure

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