Were 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

About the Role:

As a Machine Learning Engineer, you will collaborate with senior engineers and product leaders to build the future of Instacart Ads. You will explore and innovate novel machine learning solutions across the ads stack in areas such as ads targeting, bidding and pacing. You will actively contribute to team initiatives, assisting in all stages from initial ideation to prototyping, experimentation, and final implementation.

About the Team:

Instacart Ads is transforming the online grocery shopping experience by seamlessly integrating advanced advertising solutions into our platform. Our Advertiser Optimization team is a passionate group of innovators focused on developing state-of-the-art optimization technologies that boost the efficiency and impact of our advertising ecosystem. Through the use of sophisticated algorithms and machine learning models, the team helps our advertising partners achieve outstanding results while delivering a relevant, engaging experience for customers. Were also at the forefront of integrating Large Language Models (LLMs), unlocking powerful new capabilities that are redefining how brands connect with consumers in the digital grocery space.

About the Job:

Design, develop, and deploy machine learning solutions including data pipelines, production models, and serving integrations to tackle practical challenges in the ads organization.
Collaborate closely with product managers, data scientists, and infrastructure engineers to deeply understand business needs and create impactful ML applications.
Actively engage with diverse stakeholders to ensure that solutions are well-integrated and aligned with business goals.
Push the envelope on our operational efficiency by continually refining and advancing our algorithms and models.

About You:

Minimum Qualifications:

Have a graduate degree in a technical field (artificial intelligence, machine learning, economics, statistics) or equivalent work experience.
Have 1-2 years of industry experience using machine learning to solve real-world problems with large datasets
A deep understanding of machine learning algorithms and techniques, with fluency in modern research and literature
Strong programming skills in software engineering (e.g., Python, Go), along with expertise in data manipulation using tools (SQL, Spark, and Pandas), and ML frameworks (XGBoost, Torch, Tensorflow)
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
Excellent communication skills (both verbal and written) and can collaborate with a diverse group of stakeholders across all levels

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience with sequential modeling, transformer architecture, and generative retrieval
Familiarity with LLM integrations, prompt engineering, and productivity tooling
Experience in building large scale online 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. Currently, we are only hiring in the following provinces: Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia.

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

CAN

$153,000—$170,000 CAD