Staff Software Engineer, Bazel & Go

Lead Technical Direction for Bazel and Go Platforms

• Lead technical direction for Instacart's Bazel build system, including remote caching, remote build execution (RBE), build performance, and developer-facing ergonomics.
• Lead technical direction for Go platform, frameworks, standard libraries, service scaffolding, and patterns used by Go engineers across the company.
• Design and drive multi-quarter initiatives to measurably improve build times, CI reliability, and local development loop for engineers working in Bazel and Go.
• Own developer experience metrics for these systems, define success criteria, instrument them, and prioritize investments based on data.
• Partner with infrastructure, platform, and product engineering teams to roll out changes with minimal disruption.
• Set technical bar for reliability, performance, upgrade cadence, and developer ergonomics.
• Mentor engineers on the team and broader org; grow community of Bazel and Go experts.
• Represent team in cross-org technical discussions on build, CI/CD, and backend platform direction.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of software development experience.
• Deep, hands-on expertise with Bazel, including remote caching, RBE, and performance tuning of large build graphs.
• Strong production experience writing and operating Go services at scale, with expertise in structuring large Go codebases (frameworks, dependency management, testing patterns, shared libraries).
• Track record of leading cross-team technical initiatives with measurable impact on developer velocity, build performance, or CI reliability.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and distributed systems.
• Strong technical leadership, including driving direction, mentoring, and influencing without authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Experience migrating large codebase or monorepo to Bazel, or evolving existing Bazel setup through major upgrades.
• Experience owning or contributing to a Go framework, standard library, or service scaffolding used by large engineering org.
• Experience defining and instrumenting developer productivity metrics (build times, cache hit rates, CI reliability, local dev loop).
• Experience at high-growth companies operating developer infrastructure for large engineering organizations.

Compensation

Base pay ranges (depending on location):

• CA, NY, CT, NJ: $265,000–$279,500
• WA: $254,000–$268,000
• OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI: $243,000–$256,500
• All other states: $221,000–$233,000

Eligible for new hire equity grant and annual refresh grants.