Senior Product Manager, Caper Recommendations & Personalization

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

Caper is at the forefront of Physical AI, building smart shopping carts that sense and respond to the real world in real time. By bringing intelligence onto the cart, Caper digitizes the entire in-store shopping journey, turning every trip into an interactive, personalized experience from the first item added to checkout. Our plug-and-play technology requires no store renovation or operational overhaul - retailers simply add Caper Carts and instantly upgrade their stores into connected, intelligent shopping environments. Caper is one of the fastest-growing retail automation technology products in the market and is already widely adopted across the industry.

We are looking for a Senior Product Manager to own recommendations and personalization on the Caper Cart. In this role, you will define how the cart decides what to show each shopper, when to show it, and how it adapts to who they are. Every recommendation, moment of inspiration, and ranking decision on the cart screen runs through the systems you will build and refine.

This is a unique opportunity to sit at the intersection of recommendation systems, machine learning, and a physical shopping experience that unfolds in real time as a customer moves through a store. You will blend ML and data science work with hands-on UX design thinking, partnering closely with Instacart's discovery and personalization platforms while shaping a first-of-its-kind experience for the Caper customer. You will report to the Group Product Manager for Caper Customer Value and work alongside a tight-knit team of three product managers, with broad cross-functional reach across Engineering, Data Science, Design, Ads, and Operations.

About the Job

• Set and own the vision for recommendations and personalization on Caper. Caper turns the store itself into a personalization surface, where every item added and every step through the store is a chance to show something useful in the moment. You will drive Engagement as a primary pillar metric - growing customer interactions, building monetizable surfaces, and diversifying the content mix to serve savings, discovery, and health-focused shoppers.
• Own the system that decides what to show and when. Mature recommendation and item ranking using machine learning, including LLM-based techniques, and use real-time signals - cart location and motion, lists, search, and Instacart personalization data - to deliver content at the moments it is most relevant rather than constant or intrusive.
• Drive AI-first innovation to expand what Caper shows shoppers. Ship net-new content types with nuanced product information and pairings tailored to each individual, and lead the architecture for capturing real-time, in-session signals that make personalization feel genuinely intelligent.
• Champion a high-quality, intuitive shopping experience by partnering closely with Design to translate complex personalization logic into interactions that feel simple and natural on the cart screen. Spend time in labs and partner stores to observe real shopper behavior, test features, and iterate quickly based on what you learn.
• Run a fast, experiment-driven roadmap and serve as the product lead for recommendations and personalization across the organization - aligning senior stakeholders on strategy, tradeoffs, and progress, and partnering cross-functionally with Engineering, Data Science, Design, Ads, and Operations from discovery through launch with clear PRDs and measurable success criteria.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 3+ years of product management experience or equivalent practical experience
• Experience partnering with ML or data science teams to ship models into a production consumer product
• Experience defining and driving engagement or relevance metrics, and using experimentation to move them
• Demonstrated ability to leverage data and quantitative analysis to make sound decisions in ambiguous environments
• Track record of close partnership with UX design teams and applying strong design thinking practices throughout the product development process
• Strong communication and influencing skills, with experience presenting to large groups and aligning multiple senior stakeholders on strategy and tradeoffs

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building recommendation, personalization, ranking, or search products
• Experience with consumer-facing hardware, IoT, or physical retail products
• Familiarity with retail, grocery, ads, or marketplace recommendation systems

Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work. This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location. Please review our Flex First remote work policy here.

Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. Please read more about our benefits offerings here.

For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.

CA, NY, CT, NJ

$221,000—$233,000 USD

WA

$212,000—$223,500 USD

OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI

$203,000—$214,000 USD

All other states

$184,000—$194,000 USD