Software Engineering Manager, Enterprise Platform

Instacart is transforming the grocery industry by providing essential services that customers rely on. As an Engineering Manager, you will own the technical strategy and roadmap for Enterprise Platform APIs and Tools, lead a team of software engineers, and drive cross-organizational initiatives to enhance platform adoption and reliability.

Responsibilities:

• Own and articulate the technical strategy and multi‑quarter roadmap for Enterprise Platform APIs, tools, and data models, aligning outcomes with enterprise objectives and retailer needs
• Lead, mentor, and grow a high‑performing team of 10+ software engineers; hire exceptional talent, provide coaching and feedback, and foster an inclusive, high‑trust, high‑ownership culture
• Design and deliver high‑scale, low‑latency APIs and distributed services (REST/gRPC); define clear API contracts, versioning policies, and robust schema management
• Partner cross‑functionally with Product, Business Development, Professional Services, Data Science, and peer engineering teams to prioritize impact, land cross‑org initiatives, and drive platform adoption across stakeholders
• Oversee production services end‑to‑end; establish engineering best practices and SLOs/SLAs, guide on‑call operations, lead incident response and postmortems, and raise the bar on reliability and operational excellence
• Elevate developer velocity and product quality through great tooling, CI/CD, observability, and pragmatic use of AI to automate toil and accelerate delivery

Requirements:

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 2+ years managing teams of 10+ software engineers
• Proven track record leading backend/platform teams that build and operate high‑scale, low‑latency APIs and distributed services
• Hands‑on experience with service‑oriented architectures, API design (REST and/or gRPC), data modeling, and schema/version management
• Proficiency in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Go, Java, or Python) and experience building services on a major cloud provider (e.g., AWS or GCP)
• Experience running always‑on services: defining SLOs/SLAs, participating in on‑call rotations, leading incident response, and driving postmortem improvements
• Demonstrated ability to define and deliver a technical roadmap, align stakeholders, and ship cross‑functional projects end‑to‑end
• Experience hiring, coaching, and performance managing engineers; commitment to building an inclusive, collaborative team environment
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Expertise with observability and reliability tooling, plus resiliency/chaos testing
• Success driving platform adoption across multiple stakeholder teams, balancing long‑term platform investments with near‑term product needs
• Domain experience in e‑commerce, marketplaces, or enterprise platforms
• Experience improving developer velocity using AI technologies
• Advanced degree in a relevant field