Senior Software Engineer, Marketing Platform Tooling

Overview

The Marketing Platform Tooling team builds and maintains the core backend systems that power all of Instacart's marketing capabilities. At the center of this work are two production-scale platforms: our targeting platform, which resolves a large and growing library of audience segments to reach the right customers with the right content at the right time, and our CRM messaging platform, which reliably delivers millions of personalized messages a day across Instacart. Together, these systems form the foundation for how Instacart drives growth, engagement, and retention at scale.

You will build shared, composable foundations designed to serve as the backbone for the entire marketing platform space. This is greenfield infrastructure work with direct visibility into Instacart's most critical company priorities, including Enterprise expansion, Lifecycle marketing, and platform Efficiency and Quality.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join this team in Toronto as a dedicated backend owner. This is a net new role, and you'll be stepping into a high-ownership position with real scope, real urgency, and a roadmap that ladders directly into business outcomes. If you're energized by building sustainable platforms at scale, running workstreams end-to-end, and making a measurable difference on systems other teams depend on, this is the role for you.

About the Job

•   Data ingestion and processing pipelines, both real-time streaming and batch, that keep targeting data fresh and accurate.
•  Segment evaluation and matching services that resolve audiences on demand for many downstream consumers.
•  A high-volume, reliable messaging and delivery pipeline that ensures accurate, timely, personalized sends at scale.
• The shared, composable backbone and APIs these capabilities are built on, with a strong focus on observability, testing, and uptime.
• Architect, build, and maintain excellent backend applications with clean code.
• Help shape the technical direction and roadmap of our targeting and CRM platforms.
• Design and operate real-time and batch data pipelines and distributed services built for reliability and scale.
• Contribute to the shared, composable backbone that these systems are built on.
• Own important pieces of the platform that have high visibility internally.
• Communicate and collaborate extensively across teams and functions to drive consensus and align goals.
• Be empowered and responsible for planning, decision-making, shipping, and maintaining your surface areas.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend development experience with a proven track record of success.  
• Expertise in backend languages, specifically Ruby and Go (experience with Python is a plus).
• Solid understanding of Rails or Pandas.
• Experience designing scalable, reliable distributed systems, with databases (SQL/NoSQL) and data pipelines (batch and streaming).
• Proven ability in rigorous unit testing and practical problem-solving.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills, capable of collaborating with and influencing cross-functional teams.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

#LI-Remote