Staff Software Engineer, FoodStorm

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

As a Staff Software Engineer on the FoodStorm team, you will play a pivotal role in modernizing FoodStorm’s on demand ordering, catering, and prepared food platform. You’ll contribute to rearchitecting the system using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach, with a focus on building efficient, scalable, and maintainable solutions. With hands-on coding, deep problem-solving, and close collaboration with cross-functional teams-including an international engineering team in Australia-you’ll help improve the platform’s performance, reliability, and integration with Instacart systems. This role requires strong ownership of deliverables, as well as a proactive approach to technical challenges.

The FoodStorm team is leading the evolution of on demand ordering, catering, and prepared food management systems, empowering Instacart’s retail and grocery partners to streamline operations and expand their reach. We work on high-impact projects, providing solutions for seamless order management, partner integrations, and end-customer experiences. We value high levels of ownership, independence, technical excellence, and an entrepreneurial spirit.

About the Job

• Actively contribute to the rearchitecture of FoodStorm’s platform, focusing on scalability and maintainability through a service-oriented approach.
• Implement high-quality software solutions to enable seamless integration between FoodStorm and Instacart’s systems.
• Conduct hands-on coding, technical problem-solving, and system optimization.
• Collaborate closely with engineers, product managers, and designers across teams to ensure alignment on technical strategy and implementation.
• Partner with the Australia-based engineering team, ensuring effective collaboration during overlapping work hours (~2 hours daily).
• Provide technical mentorship to peers, fostering a culture of learning and continuous improvement.
• Help identify and implement best practices to improve the team’s efficiency and system performance.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years experience designing, building, and maintaining scalable systems and distributed architectures.
• Proficiency in a modern programming language such as Python, Java, C#, or similar.
• Strong hands-on experience with backend development and system integration.
• Proven ability to solve complex technical problems in a collaborative environment.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills, with experience working across time zones (including ~2-hour overlap with Australia).
• Strong sense of ownership and accountability for delivering high-quality results.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with .NET Core, SOA patterns, and API integrations is a plus.
• Experience working on system modernization or large-scale technical migrations (e.g., monolithic to SOA).
• Experience with front-end web development.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Knowledge of grocery retail, catering, or enterprise platform technologies.
• A commitment to developing and deploying reliable, performant tools that deliver excellent partner and customer experiences.

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

$265,000—$279,000 USD

WA

$254,000—$268,000 USD

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

$243,000—$257,000 USD

All other states

$216,000—$240,000 USD