# Staff Software Engineer, Data Governance & Foundations

**Company:** [Instacart](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/instacart)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Data Engineering
**Salary:** $221k – $280k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** apache iceberg, apache flink, trino, ClickHouse, apache kafka, Spark, Snowflake, Databricks, apache airflow, dbt, Delta Lake, Scala, Python, SQL, AWS
**Posted:** 2026-08-07

> Leads architecture and delivery of Instacart’s open lakehouse foundation, governance controls, and multi-engine compute strategy. Requires 10+ years building production-scale data infrastructure or distributed systems, with expertise in lakehouse, streaming, and platform migrations.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Translate data strategy into a multi-year architecture roadmap covering monetization, federated access, real-time workloads, scale, maturity, and cost efficiency.
- Own the open lakehouse foundation, including unified table formats, storage governance, and a multi-engine compute portfolio for interactive, batch, and streaming workloads.
- Drive real-time and streaming infrastructure for Ads, Fraud, and ML use cases, including deployment patterns, SLAs, and operational practices.
- Apply LLM and AI tools to platform development, automation, observability, and cost optimization.
- Partner with teams to embed AI-powered capabilities into the data platform.
- Lead architecture reviews, mentor senior and staff engineers, influence hiring, and communicate technical trade-offs to technical and executive audiences.

## Requirements
- 10+ 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 such as Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Hudi.
- Experience with distributed query and compute engines such as Trino, Apache Spark, or ClickHouse, including performance tuning and production reliability.
- Experience with event-driven and streaming infrastructure such as Apache Kafka or Apache Flink.
- Proven ownership of major platform transitions or migrations delivered to production.
- Ability to build cost-benefit and total-cost-of-ownership models for infrastructure investments and drive alignment through architecture documentation and strategy memos.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Experience designing platform-level governance controls and familiarity with SOX, CPRA, or GDPR.
- FinOps experience optimizing data platform spend, including multi-million-dollar infrastructure budgets and vendor contract negotiations.
- Deep SQL proficiency and strong Python or Scala skills for systems-level development.
- Experience with Apache Airflow orchestration and dbt data transformation pipelines in large-scale production environments.
- Bachelor's, master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

## Compensation and Benefits
- Base salary range: $221,000–$279,500 USD, dependent on permanent work location.
- Eligible for a new-hire equity grant and annual refresh grants.
- Market-competitive compensation and benefits.
- Remote work under Instacart's Flex First policy.

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