Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Instacart is seeking a Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure to lead the architecture and delivery of their data platform, including open lakehouse foundation, governance, and multi-engine compute strategy. The role involves collaborating with multiple teams to build scalable, reliable, and cost-efficient data systems, with a focus on real-time and streaming infrastructure, AI-native engineering, and platform excellence.

Location: Remote (Canada)

Salary: $254,000—$268,000 CAD

Responsibilities

• Translate data strategy into an actionable multi-year architecture roadmap.
• Own the open lakehouse foundation: define and deliver unified table formats, storage governance, and a multi-engine compute portfolio.
• Drive real-time and streaming infrastructure for critical use cases (Ads, Fraud, ML).
• Pioneer AI-native data infrastructure engineering by applying LLM/AI tools to the platform lifecycle.
• Lead architecture reviews, mentor engineers, influence hiring, and communicate complex trade-offs.

Requirements

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building and operating data infrastructure or distributed systems at production scale.
• Hands-on expertise with modern data lakehouse architectures and open table formats (e.g., Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi) and with distributed query/compute engines (e.g., Trino, Spark, ClickHouse).
• Experience with event-driven and streaming infrastructure (e.g., Kafka, Flink).
• Proven ownership of major platform transitions or migrations delivered to production.
• Ability to build cost/benefit and TCO models for infrastructure investments.

Benefits

• Highly market-competitive compensation and benefits.
• Remote work in Canada, with specific provinces listed.
• Eligible for equity grants and annual refresh grants.
• Review of benefits offerings linked in the description.

Additional Information

• The role is remote and the base pay range is dependent on location.
• Currently hiring in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia.
• Offers may vary based on experience and skills.