Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Instacart

Posted 3mo ago

The employer’s full description could not be read from their board. This is a summary of the posting — follow the apply link for the original.

Translate data strategy into multi-year architecture roadmap
Define and deliver unified table formats, storage governance, and multi-engine compute
Drive real-time and streaming infrastructure for critical use cases
Pioneer AI-native data infrastructure engineering
Elevate engineering excellence through architecture reviews and mentorship

10+ 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)
Hands-on expertise with distributed query/compute engines (e.g., Trino, Spark, ClickHouse), including performance tuning and production reliability
Experience with event-driven and streaming infrastructure (e.g., Kafka, Flink) for real-time pipelines and serving systems
Proven ownership of major platform transitions or migrations (build vs. buy, migration design, risk management) delivered to production
Ability to build cost/benefit and TCO models for infrastructure investments
Ability to drive alignment via clear architecture docs and strategy memos across multiple teams and leadership levels

Experience designing platform-level governance controls and familiarity with compliance frameworks (e.g., SOX, CPRA, GDPR)
FinOps experience optimizing data platform spend, including managing multi-million dollar infrastructure budgets and negotiating vendor contracts
Deep SQL proficiency
Strong skills in Python or Scala for systems-level development
Experience with orchestration (e.g., Apache Airflow) and data transformation pipelines (e.g., dbt) in large-scale production environments
Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Skills