# Senior Software Engineer II, AI Labs & Foundations

**Company:** [Instacart](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/instacart)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Fullstack Engineering
**Salary:** $192k – $243k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Go, Python, TypeScript, LLMs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Vector Search, Pinecone, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Kafka, CI/CD, Observability, Foundation Models
**Posted:** 2026-09-02

> Build and operate high-scale production AI systems and agentic experiences, integrating foundation models and delivering reliable, observable services. The role requires senior software engineering experience, production AI/ML expertise, and proficiency in Golang, Python, or TypeScript.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate production AI-powered systems and agentic experiences, including conversational shopping and voice AI.
- Build foundational systems spanning embedding infrastructure, voice AI pipelines, client-facing components, and integrations.
- Integrate foundation models through APIs and open-source frameworks, applying retrieval-augmented generation and vector search where appropriate.
- Own projects end-to-end, including requirements, technical design, implementation, testing, deployment, observability, and iterative improvement for reliability, latency, and cost efficiency.
- Collaborate with product, design, data science, and infrastructure teams to ship AI features.
- Drive engineering excellence through system design, code review, technical leadership, and AI/ML production engineering best practices.

## Requirements
- Proven experience as a senior software engineer building, shipping, and operating production systems at scale.
- Hands-on experience with AI or ML in production, including shipping LLM-powered features or integrating foundation model APIs into live products.
- Experience owning services end-to-end, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and on-call participation.
- Strong cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration skills.
- Experience with Golang, Python, or TypeScript.
- Ability and enthusiasm to use AI-assisted development tools such as Copilot, Cursor, or Claude.

## Nice to Have
- 5–8+ years of industry experience.
- Experience taking unconventional ideas from prototype through rapid iteration to production.
- Experience building conversational agents, multi-turn dialogue systems, or agentic LLM applications.
- Experience with speech-to-text, text-to-speech, natural language interfaces, LLM fine-tuning, transfer learning, model training, and model-performance measurement.
- Experience with embedding systems, vector search, or retrieval-augmented generation using vector databases such as Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, or Elasticsearch.
- Experience with AWS or GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, and event-driven or distributed systems such as Kafka.
- Demonstrated mentorship and technical leadership within cross-functional teams.

## Compensation
- Remote US base pay varies by permanent work location:
  - California, New York, Connecticut, or New Jersey: $230,000–$242,500 USD
  - Washington: $220,000–$232,000 USD
  - Oregon, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, DC, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, or Hawaii: $211,000–$222,500 USD
  - All other states: $192,000–$202,500 USD
- Eligible for a new-hire equity grant and annual refresh grants.

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