AI Solutions Architect

Responsibilities

• Own data modeling, integration design, and governance across every engagement; serve as the senior technical authority from pre-sales through delivery.
• Map customer data and Instacart's data ontology together, and gate technical feasibility before any build begins.
• Establish integration patterns between the Intelligence Platform and partner systems, e.g., POS, ERP, loyalty, CRM, Snowflake, proprietary APIs, and mobile surfaces.
• Bridge partner technical requirements with Instacart R&D roadmaps, APIs, and SDKs; surface gaps and advocate for platform changes needed to serve the field.
• Prototype and code in real-time alongside partners.
• Review designs and unblock the Forward Deployed Engineers to ensure architectural integrity across the pod's engagements.
• Codify reusable integration patterns into scalable architecture templates as the pod scales.

Requirements

• 10+ years in solutions architecture, data engineering, or senior software engineering, with demonstrated experience designing enterprise-scale systems.
• Deep expertise in data architecture and modeling across messy, heterogeneous enterprise environments, with enough AI/ML familiarity to understand how data quality and structure determine what is possible on the intelligence layer.
• Experience designing integrations across complex enterprise environments including ERP, POS, Snowflake, and proprietary APIs.
• Hands-on coding is non-negotiable — the ability to build is as important as the ability to design.
• Proven customer-facing experience presenting technical architectures to both engineering and executive audiences.
• Strong systems thinking — able to hold the full technical picture of a complex engagement while also working in the details.
• Comfort defining architecture from first principles in greenfield, ambiguous environments.

Nice-to-Haves

• Background in retail tech, e-commerce infrastructure, or CPG data systems (POS, ERP, Snowflake).
• Familiarity with open agent standards or multi-agent orchestration frameworks.
• Prior experience in enterprise software implementation or systems integration.
• Startup or high-growth environment experience.