Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Search & Discovery

Minimum Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or related field, or equivalent industry experience.
• 10+ years building and operating large scale machine learning systems in production.
• Proven track record architecting ML systems that power core product experiences at global scale.
• Deep expertise in areas such as recommendation systems, ranking models, embeddings, representation learning, or search systems.
• Experience combining generative AI with traditional ML systems such as retrieval, ranking, and personalization.
• Experience designing ML platforms that support large scale experimentation, training, and deployment.
• Ability to influence senior engineering and product leaders and drive technical strategy.
• Experience mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar across teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building search, discovery, or recommendation systems for large consumer platforms.
• Expertise in large language models, agentic AI systems, or tool using AI architectures.
• Experience fine tuning and distilling LLMs for low latency production systems, balancing model quality, latency, and cost.
• Experience building ML infrastructure supporting large scale experimentation and model deployment.
• Background working on e-commerce, marketplaces, or large consumer platforms.
• Recognized technical leadership through publications, patents, conference talks, or open source contributions.

Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work. This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location. Please review our Flex First remote work policy here.

Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. Please read more about our benefits offerings here.…