Senior Manager, Machine Learning Engineering

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.

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.

As the Senior Engineering Manager for the Advertiser Optimization team, you'll lead a team of engineers and applied research scientists to build state-of-the-art systems that optimize ad performance via bidding, pacing, targeting, etc. Building on Instacart’s unique data and market position, these systems create value for advertising partners, improve consumer experience, and directly contribute to Instacart's overall revenue / business success.

You'll have the unique opportunity to collaborate with a cross-functional team, turning diverse insights into powerful solutions that elevate advertising effectiveness. Your leadership will steer the development of sophisticated algorithms and machine learning models, driving performance gains across our advertising platform. Together, we'll build an ads ecosystem that not only serves millions but also excels in delivering value to users and advertisers alike.

Instacart Ads is at the forefront of transforming the grocery shopping experience by seamlessly integrating advanced advertising solutions into our platform. Our Advertiser Optimization team is a dynamic group of innovators devoted to building cutting-edge optimization solutions that enhance the efficiency and performance of our ads ecosystem. By leveraging advanced algorithms and machine learning models, the team ensures that our advertising partners achieve exceptional results while providing a relevant and engaging experience for our customers.

• Guide and mentor team members, building career development plans and supporting their professional growth.
• Nurture a culture geared towards innovation and ongoing enhancement, ensuring the team's efforts are in harmony with the company's vision and engineering excellence. Regularly assess team performance, offering constructive feedback, and advocate for a collaborative and inclusive work environment.
• Build strategic partnerships with data science, infrastructure, and other technical teams to drive synergy across the organization, ensuring seamless integration of software engineering and machine learning solutions.
• Shape a long-term technical vision in the auto-bidding, budget pacing and user targeting space, which supports the company's business goals. Identify and integrate emerging technologies to boost product features. Manage the technical aspects of key projects, proactively addressing risks. Foster a culture of continuous improvement in software engineering processes.
• Oversee the delivery of key projects, proactively addressing risks, and establish team processes that improve delivery velocity, quality, and operational stability with minimal incidents.
• Facilitate the translation of complex algorithms into impactful solutions, and prioritize the product backlog to manage development timelines effectively. Collaborate with product managers to ensure engineering efforts are aligned with market needs.

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Control Systems, Computational Economics, or a related quantitative field.
• 7+ years of experience in software development.
• 2+ years of experience in software engineering management.
• Experience with digital advertising platforms, real-time bidding, budget pacing, and user targeting solutions.
• Proven track record of technical leadership in developing software products.
• Evidence of implementing innovative technical solutions that drove business success.
• Familiarity with data science, optimization, and machine learning techniques.

• PhD in Computer Science, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Control Systems, Computational Economics, or a related quantitative field.
• 4+ years of experience in software engineering management.
• Experience building machine learning models and solutions.

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