Senior Software Engineer II, AI Labs & Foundations

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 Join Instacart's mission to transform grocery shopping through frontier AI. As a Senior Software Engineer on AI Labs & Foundations, you will design, build, and operate the high-scale production systems that power our most ambitious AI experiences—from Cart Assistant, our conversational shopping agent, to voice AI interactions and beyond. This is a high-impact opportunity to work at the intersection of robust software engineering and cutting-edge production AI/ML, directly shaping products used by millions of customers every day. We are hiring a Senior Software Engineer who will participate in the design and delivery of production AI systems, identify high-leverage technical opportunities, and contribute hands-on to AI-native products across Instacart's platform. We value bottom-up ideas, high engineering quality, and close partnership with Product, Data Science, ML, and Infrastructure teams. If you enjoy inventing, navigating ambiguity, prototyping fast, and turning wild ideas into real, scalable products, this is the team for you. AI Labs & Foundations sits at the intersection of frontier AI research and production engineering. Our portfolio spans the full stack of AI innovation at Instacart, including building and launching Cart Assistant, pioneering voice AI interactions, and constructing the foundational systems that power these cutting-edge experiences. We are a fast-moving, collaborative team that thrives on 0-to-1 thinking, shares learnings openly, and ships with urgency by prototyping fast and testing rigorously. About the Job Design, build, and operate production AI-powered systems and agentic experiences (including Cart Assistant and voice AI) that directly impact how millions of customers shop. Build foundational systems for cutting-edge AI experiences, ranging from embedding infrastructure and voice AI pipelines, to client facing components and integrations, by prototyping bold ideas and productizing what works. Integrate foundation models via APIs and open-source frameworks; apply techniques like retrieval-augmented generation and vector search where appropriate. Own projects end-to-end: requirements, technical design, implementation, testing, deployment, observability, and iterative improvement focused on reliability, latency, and cost efficiency. Collaborate with cross-functional partners in product, design, data science, and infrastructure to ship AI features end-to-end. Drive engineering excellence, including thoughtful system design, rigorous code review, and technical leadership that includes defining and promoting best practices for AI/ML production engineering across the team. About You Minimum Qualifications: Proven senior software engineer who has built, shipped, and operated production systems at scale. You make architectural calls, own what you build, and deliver through ambiguity. Hands-on e