Technical Program Manager

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

This role offers the exciting opportunity to leverage your technical expertise and leadership skills to drive programs that enhance our products, applications, and platform, and ultimately, the experience of millions of users. As a Technical Program Manager at Instacart, you will be at the forefront of our mission to transform the grocery industry by delivering on Instacart’s most complex and impactful efforts. You will fully own projects, working closely with cross-functional teams in Engineering, Product Management, Data Science, Design and others to define requirements, manage execution, and mitigate risks. We are looking for driven individuals who thrive in a fast-paced engineering environment, are passionate about quality and improving team performance, and feel comfortable pushing on scope and technical trade-offs as well as building an executive narrative. You are able to operate independently, and work proactively with various teams across the organization.

Every day we solve incredibly complex, cross-functional problems to create an experience for our users that is absolutely magical. Join us!

About the Team

The Technical Program Management team is an integral part of the Instacart Engineering organization. We bring teams together to tackle big problems and lead Instacart’s products, platform, and operational excellence forward. Our work and its impact span the multi-sided marketplace, from connecting customers with coupons and deals for their favorite brands, unlocking new ways to shop for and deliver groceries, to evolving our ML/AI and data infrastructure at Instacart, and more. We are trusted to deliver on Instacart’s strategy at scale, unravel dependencies, and promote the strong collaboration and communication that enables teams across the company to achieve more together.

About the Job

• Lead the planning and high quality technical execution of small to medium sized engineering projects, demonstrating a strong sense of urgency, efficiency, and ownership.
• Work closely with Software Engineers, Product Managers, Product Designers, and Data Scientists to set project objectives and metric-based success criteria. Drive definition of project requirements and execution plans, and manage the project’s progress and outcome.
• Own clear and effective communication with stakeholders, ensuring alignment on and awareness of priorities, risks, and changes.
• Foster a culture of teamwork and shared goals, creating a collaborative team environment and driving the right level of process to ensure efficiency and high quality delivery within the project team.
• Contribute broadly to Instacart’s success by suggesting and driving organization-wide initiatives.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 2-5 years of work experience post-graduation in a technology field, preferably as a technical program or project manager, product manager, software engineer (technical domain), or related technical discipline.
• A strong communicator able to distill multiple streams of information, convey priorities and risks, and build a narrative for stakeholders.
• A strong sense of ownership and intellectual curiosity to understand executional and technical problems in depth, identify potential issues and offer actions to prevent them.
• Excellent collaborator and motivator, able to bring a team together to align and deliver on a common goal.
• Growth mindset - seeks and is receptive to actionable feedback and growth opportunities.
• Takes accountability seriously; can operate independently to deliver responsibilities and milestones on time and within budget.
• Self-motivated and thrives in a fast-paced environment.
• Bachelor's degree in a technology / engineering discipline.

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated ability to create functional specs, set a project structure and influence project strategy. Previous experience in managing a project end-to-end, from definition to launch, throughout a software development lifecycle.
• Previous experience in program management tooling, process definition.
• Track record of operating across multiple teams and functions to successfully deliver outcomes.