[Remote] Senior Software Engineer II, AI Labs & Foundations

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Instacart is transforming the grocery industry by leveraging AI technology to enhance shopping experiences. As a Senior Software Engineer in AI Labs & Foundations, you will design and operate high-scale production systems for innovative AI applications, directly impacting millions of customers. This role involves collaboration with cross-functional teams to deliver AI features and drive engineering excellence in production environments.ResponsibilitiesDesign, build, and operate production AI-powered systems and agentic experiences (including Cart Assistant and voice AI) that directly impact how millions of customers shopBuild 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 worksIntegrate foundation models via APIs and open-source frameworks; apply techniques like retrieval-augmented generation and vector search where appropriateOwn projects end-to-end: requirements, technical design, implementation, testing, deployment, observability, and iterative improvement focused on reliability, latency, and cost efficiencyCollaborate with cross-functional partners in product, design, data science, and infrastructure to ship AI features end-to-endDrive 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 teamSkillsProven senior software engineer who has built, shipped, and operated production systems at scale. You make architectural calls, own what you build, and deliver through ambiguityHands-on experience with AI or ML in production. You've shipped LLM-powered features or integrated foundation model APIs into a live product, demonstrating the necessary expertise at the intersection of robust software engineering and deep production MLExperience owning services end-to-end, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability (logging, metrics, tracing), and on-call participationStrong communicator who partners well across disciplines - you want to get to the right answer, not just defend the first oneExcitement and ability to leverage cutting-edge development tools, including AI assistance (e.g., Copilot, Cursor, Claude), to maximize velocity5 to 8+ years of industry experienceA track record of 0-to-1 work taking unconventional ideas from prototype through rapid iteration to productionExperience building conversational agents, multi-turn dialogue systems, or agentic LLM applicationsExperience with STT/TTS or natural language interfaces, LLM fine tuning, ML transfer learning, model training and the vocabulary of measurement of model performanceExperience with embedding systems, vector search, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, or Elasticsearch)Experience with cloud platforms (AWS or GCP), containers (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes)Experience with event-driven or distributed systems (e.g., Kafka)Demonstrated mentorship and technical leadership within cross-functional teamsBenefitsInstacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work.This role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants.Flex First remote work policyPlease read more about our benefits offerings here.Company OverviewInstacart is an online grocery platform that offers same-day delivery and pickup services for retailers and consumers. It was founded in 2012, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, with a workforce of 1001-5000 employees. Its website is https://www.instacart.com.