Senior Android Engineer, Caper

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

About the Role -As an Android Engineer at Caper, you’ll play a central role in creating seamless shopping experiences by building and optimizing our Android-based applications that power revolutionary in-store retail solutions. You’ll work on cutting-edge technologies to contribute directly to the development of intuitive and high-performance interfaces for devices like smart carts, mobile apps, and embedded systems. Your innovations will delight shoppers worldwide while helping retailers streamline operations and achieve new levels of efficiency.

About the Team - The Android team at Caper (Instacart) is transforming the in-store shopping experience with cutting-edge technology. As part of Instacart’s Connected Stores initiative, we help retailers around the world create seamless omnichannel shopping experiences by powering intelligent devices like the Caper Cart—an AI-driven smart cart that combines computer vision, IoT, and advanced Android interfaces to enable a frictionless, grab-and-go shopping journey.

We thrive on collaboration, tackling challenges at the intersection of hardware, software, and artificial intelligence. From designing intuitive user experiences to optimizing performance on resource-constrained devices, the Android team plays a vital role in making grocery shopping seamless, efficient, and enjoyable for everyone.

About the Job

• Architect, design, and implement scalable and robust Android applications that power Caper products, including smart carts and devices for Connected Stores.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across Product, Design, and Backend Engineering to create intuitive and functional interfaces.
• Optimize performance and reliability for Android applications in resource-constrained hardware environments.
• Build and refine systems to monitor and analyze performance at scale, ensuring seamless user experiences.
• Drive team initiatives in building scalable, maintainable, and testable mobile codebases.
• Lead performance best practices to optimize Android platforms and ensure low-latency interactions.
• Work with QA to guide and improve automation processes for cart and app testing.
• Stay updated with new Android technologies, frameworks, and trends, and champion their adoption where applicable.
• Be a mentor and solid contributor to the team, advocating for best coding practices and fostering a culture of collaboration and quality.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of Android development experience, with a focus on customer-facing applications.
• Proficiency in Kotlin and deep expertise in Android development technologies like Jetpack libraries (e.g., Compose, Room, MVVM).
• A proven track record of optimizing app performance in resource-constrained environments.
• Familiarity with both RxJava and Kotlin coroutines, with a practical understanding of asynchronous programming.
• Hands-on experience with rigorous unit testing and building maintainable, testable codebases.
• A collaborative mindset and ability to effectively influence cross-functional teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Deep expertise in performance optimization and profiling tools specific to Android.
• Hands-on experience with monitoring and observability tools such as Datadog.
• Prior experience in the retail or e-commerce industries, or on other consumer-facing apps.
• Strong understanding of advanced Android concepts, including custom UI implementation and animations.

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.