Skip to main content
JD
Looking for a job

Joshua Downes

@joshuadownes

Senior Software Engineer at Instacart, powering a grocery catalog platform processing 3 billion updates daily.

United States
Message

At Instacart, I work on the real-time grocery catalog and item-availability platform, processing roughly 3 billion catalog updates per day across 1,800 retailer banners and 85,000 stores. I own Python catalog microservices with p95 latency under 200 milliseconds.

I designed hybrid storage with PostgreSQL and SQL Server for catalog records and retailer configuration, and shipped multi-tenant tools for retailer onboarding and catalog management. I also built Kafka and Flink pipelines to synchronize product, pricing, and availability data from more than 30 sources.

At Twitter, I developed Python streaming services for Tweet interactions and engagement, handling approximately 400 billion events per day. Kafka-based pipelines transformed and enriched events to deliver engagement metrics with roughly 10-second end-to-end latency.

Earlier, I built backend services at Facebook and developed automation and data-processing workflows at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Across these roles, I’ve worked on distributed systems, production reliability, and Python performance, and mentored engineers on system design and code quality.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Amazon logoAM

Software Development Engineer

Feb 2017 - Apr 2018 (1 year 2 months)

Developed Python services for internal merchant tools, integrating with SQL Server for order and inventory data. Automated data-validation tasks using Python and AWS Lambda, reducing manual reconciliation time by 20%.

EI

Web Developer

Eduware, Inc

Oct 2015 - May 2016 (7 months)

Developed front-end features and Python backend APIs for an educational platform, improving page-load times through caching and query optimizations. Integrated PostgreSQL databases for student enrollment tracking.

GE Transportation logoGT

Software Engineering Intern

GE Transportation

May 2015 - Aug 2015 (3 months)

Developed Python automation scripts for testing rail-system diagnostics software, reducing manual test cycle time for the QA team during a summer internship.

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Stony Brook University logoSU

Stony Brook University

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science

2008 - 2012

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Stony Brook University, completed in 2012.

Interested in hiring Joshua?

You can contact Joshua and 90k+ other talented remote workers on Himalayas.

Message Joshua

People also viewed

View all talent

Get matched with your dream remote job

Sign up now and join over 250,000+ remote workers who receive personalized job alerts, curated job matches, and more for free!

Sign up
Himalayas profile for an example user named Frankie Sullivan