# Staff Software Engineer, Data Governance & Foundations

**Company:** [Instacart](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/instacart)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Data Engineering
**Salary:** $221k – $280k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Trino, Spark, ClickHouse, Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Python, Scala, Apache Airflow, dbt, Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, SQL
**Posted:** 2026-04-08

> Staff engineer owns architecture and delivery of open lakehouse foundation, data governance, and multi-engine compute strategy at Instacart. Requires 5+ years in data infrastructure with expertise in Iceberg, Trino, Spark, Kafka, and streaming systems.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

- Translate Instacart’s data strategy (e.g., monetization, federated access, real-time) into an actionable multi-year architecture roadmap; align with leadership while evolving the platform for scale, maturity, and cost efficiency.
- Own the open lakehouse foundation: define and deliver unified table formats, storage governance, and a multi-engine compute portfolio (interactive, batch, streaming) that enables portability and prevents lock-in.
- Drive real-time and streaming infrastructure for critical use cases (Ads, Fraud, ML): set deployment patterns, SLAs, and operational practices that balance performance, availability, and spend.
- Pioneer AI-native data infrastructure engineering by applying LLM/AI tools to the platform lifecycle—accelerating development, automation, observability, and cost optimization—and partnering to embed AI-powered capabilities into the platform.
- Elevate engineering excellence: lead architecture reviews, mentor senior/staff engineers, influence hiring, and clearly communicate complex trade-offs to both technical and executive audiences to ensure cross-org alignment.

## Minimum Qualifications

- 5+ years of software engineering experience building and operating data infrastructure or distributed systems at production scale.
- Hands-on expertise with modern data lakehouse architectures and open table formats (e.g., **Apache Iceberg**, **Delta Lake**, Hudi) and with distributed query/compute engines (e.g., **Trino**, **Spark**, **ClickHouse**), including performance tuning and production reliability.
- Experience with event-driven and streaming infrastructure (e.g., **Kafka**, **Flink**) for real-time pipelines and serving systems.
- Proven ownership of major platform transitions or migrations (build vs. buy, migration design, risk management) delivered to production.
- Ability to build cost/benefit and TCO models for infrastructure investments and to drive alignment via clear architecture docs and strategy memos across multiple teams and leadership levels.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Experience designing platform-level governance controls and familiarity with compliance frameworks (e.g., SOX, CPRA, GDPR).
- FinOps experience optimizing data platform spend, including managing multi-million dollar infrastructure budgets and negotiating vendor contracts.
- Deep SQL proficiency and strong skills in **Python** or **Scala** for systems-level development.
- Experience with orchestration (e.g., **Apache Airflow**) and data transformation pipelines (e.g., **dbt**) in large-scale production environments.
- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

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