Engineering Manager, Service Platform

Remote from: Canada
Salary, yearly, USD: 196,000 - 207,000
Department: Software Engineering
Employment type: Full Time,
Job posted: 24 Jun 2026
Apply before: 24 Jul 2026
Experience level: Midweight
Views / Applies: 19 / 0

About company

About Instacart

Instacart invites the world to share love through food. This is how homemade is made.

Internet
2012

Actively Hiring

AI Summary

Instacart is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the Service Platform team, responsible for core deployment and release engineering systems including canary infrastructure and end-to-end deployment tooling. This role is critical to ensuring developers can ship code safely and efficiently. The ideal candidate is a product-focused leader with strong experience in large-scale distributed systems, people management, and developer experience. You will set the vision, drive execution, and partner with cross-functional teams to build intuitive, scalable, and resilient systems.

Role DNA

Job Complexity

Easy Hard

Pace & Pressure

Relaxed Fast-paced

Autonomy Level

Guided Full Ownership

Communication Load

Independent Highly Collaborative

AI Insight The role requires deep technical expertise in distributed systems, deployment infrastructure, and managing cross-functional stakeholders, making it highly challenging. The fast-paced environment and need to navigate ambiguous problem spaces increase the difficulty.

Salary Analysis

AI Insight The offered salary range of $196,000 - $207,000 is competitive and above the median for similar roles in the US market, reflecting the seniority and critical nature of the position.

Key Skills

Engineering Management Service Platform Deployment Systems Canary Infrastructure Developer Experience Distributed Systems Infrastructure Release Engineering Stakeholder Management Incident Management

Cover Letter Sample

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am writing to express my strong interest in the Engineering Manager, Service Platform role at Instacart. With over 7 years of software development experience and 2+ years leading engineering teams, I have a proven track record in building and scaling high-impact internal platforms. My expertise in deployment and release engineering, coupled with a product-focused mindset, aligns perfectly with the needs of your Service Platform team.

In my previous role, I led the development of a canary deployment system that improved release confidence by 40% while reducing rollback time. I am passionate about creating intuitive developer tools that enable fast iteration without compromising reliability. I thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and have experience managing cross-stakeholder relationships to prioritize customer needs.

I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to Instacart's mission and help shape the foundation that enables every engineer to ship with confidence. I look forward to discussing how my experience can drive success for your team.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

Possible Interview Questions

Can you describe a time when you led a team to design and implement a major change to a deployment or release system? What were the key challenges and outcomes?

In my previous role, I led the redesign of our canary deployment system to support multi-service rollouts. Key challenges included ensuring backward compatibility and minimizing developer friction. We implemented a phased rollout with automated rollback triggers, resulting in a 50% reduction in deployment-related incidents.

How do you balance the need for fast innovation with maintaining high reliability in a platform team?

I prioritize by using a risk-based approach: critical systems require rigorous testing and gradual rollouts, while less critical features can move faster. I also invest in robust monitoring and automated canary analysis to catch issues early without slowing down developers.

Describe a time when you had to manage a difficult cross-functional stakeholder relationship. How did you handle it?

I had a situation where a product team wanted frequent releases that strained our deployment pipeline. I facilitated a workshop to understand their needs and proposed a solution: separate deployment tracks for experimental vs stable releases. This improved collaboration and met both velocity and reliability goals.

What strategies do you use to develop your direct reports and build a strong engineering culture?

I focus on regular one-on-ones, clear goal setting, and providing stretch assignments. I encourage a blameless post-mortem culture and invest in learning opportunities like tech talks and conferences. I also promote ownership by giving team members autonomy over their projects.

How would you approach improving the developer experience for internal tools? Can you give an example?

I start by gathering feedback through surveys and user interviews to identify pain points. For example, we noticed developers were spending too much time configuring deployments. We created a self-service portal with sensible defaults and documentation, cutting setup time by 70%.

We’re transforming the grocery industry

At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community. We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers.

Instacart has become a lifeline for millions of people, and we’re building the team to help push our shopping cart forward. If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, come join our table.

Instacart is a Flex First team

There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work. Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their best work—whether it’s from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop—while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work.

Overview

As the Engineering Manager for the Service Platform team, you will lead the group responsible for Instacart’s core deployment and release engineering systems, including our canary infrastructure and end‑to‑end deployment tooling. This platform is foundational to the reliability of every service at Instacart, and your work will directly shape how developers safely, confidently, and efficiently ship code. You will partner closely with product, infrastructure, and service teams to define and evolve a platform that enables fast iteration without compromising reliability.

We are looking for a product-focused engineering manager with a strong interest in developer experience and internal tools, who can guide the team in building intuitive, scalable, and highly resilient systems. You will set the vision, drive execution, and ensure that Instacart engineers have world‑class tools to deploy, validate, and monitor their services.

At Instacart, the Service Platform team is a critical enabler for every engineering organization across the company. From owning our deployment pipeline and canary systems to defining the tooling that powers safe, reliable service delivery, our team ensures that developers can ship with confidence. We take pride in deep ownership, a strong product mindset, and a highly collaborative culture. You will work closely with experienced engineers and leaders across Instacart to drive key reliability and platform initiatives end to end. Our work directly shapes the stability, velocity, and success of Instacart’s overall platform.

About the Job

Product focused leader who is able to adapt to critically fast paced environment
Ability to lead both product and critical reliability systems like Temporal/Canary/Deployments
Ability to articulate and convey priorities and balance constant needs around the organization
Ability to manage cross-cutting stakeholder relationships, prioritizing customer needs first
Eager to navigate ambiguous, hairy, and technical problem spaces and fully understand our deployment infra end to end
Leader by example, and strong incident triaging mindset
Eager to jump into domains, languages, and problem areas that might be new and unfamiliar

About You

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience
2+ years of experience of leading and managing people with an emphasis on getting deep into details on designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems.
7+ years of experience with software development in one or more programming languages
Proven track record of launching and shipping high-impact products; bonus points for internal, developer facing products.
Strong proficiency in maintaining high standards for production services

Preferred Qualifications

Strong communication skills and ability to contextualize problems across various audiences
Skilled at navigating ambiguity and involving the right stakeholders to address issues efficiently
Experience building and shipping products to users
Expertise building platforms and high scale infrastructure
Visionary thinker capable of generating transformative ideas

#LI-Remote

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. Currently, we are only hiring in the following provinces: Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia.

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.

For Canadian based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.

CAN

$196,000—$207,000 USD

Apply now >