Senior Software Engineer (Web)
Instacart
- Location
- Canada
- Job Type
- full-time
- Salary
- $165,000—$183,000 CAD
- Posted
- August 21, 2025
Job Description
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.
About The Role
This role is about reimagining the enterprise experience for our retailer partners through building a powerful data visualization and insights platform. You will lead initiatives to create intuitive analytics dashboards, streamline reporting workflows, and build tools that empower both external partners and internal teams to make data-driven decisions that transform their business operations.
The Senior Software Engineer will enhance our enterprise platform by developing robust web architectures and innovative features for our retailer insights portal. Collaborating closely with product teams, data engineers, and business stakeholders, you will lead the innovation of our frontend services, enabling sophisticated analytics capabilities that scale with our growing partner ecosystem.
About the Team
The Retailer Storefronts teams are dedicated to building world-class enterprise experiences and tools that connect Instacart with our retail partners. We're looking for a results-driven Web Software Engineer to lead key platform initiatives. You'll collaborate with cross-functional teams including data engineering, customer success, product, and design in shipping features that directly impact our partners' success. We emphasize building scalable solutions, maintaining high reliability standards, and creating intuitive experiences. If you're passionate about enterprise software and excited to build tools that power major retail operations, join us in shaping the future of retail technology.
About the Job
Responsibilities:
- Design, build, and maintain high-quality web applications.
- Lead the development of our web system's roadmap, prioritizing scalability and reliability.
- Innovate and think creatively to develop new features that enhance our customer's shopping experiences.
- Own and lead major components of our product, ensuring they meet both internal standards and external expectations.
- Collaborate across teams to foster a unified approach to product development, facilitating consensus and driving effective outcomes.
- Responsible for the strategic planning and execution of projects you oversee, from inception to deployment and maintenance.
About You
Minimum Qualifications
- 5+ years of web development experience, with a strong record of project delivery.
- Proficiency in web languages, such as Typescript.
- Proficiency in web frameworks, such as React.
- A solid foundation in unit testing and problem-solving.
- Exceptional communication skills and the ability to lead and collaborate with diverse teams.
- Holds a Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- Effectively lead a cross-functional team, demonstrating strong teamwork skills, and capable of clearly communicating ideas and fostering alignment across different departments.
- Experience in building scalable solutions and architecture.
- Thorough knowledge of developing applications using GraphQL.
- Skilled in the use of monitoring and observability tools like Datadog..
For Canadian based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.
🎯 Who is this job for?
This role is ideal for a Senior Web Engineer with 5+ years of experience in TypeScript, React, scalable web architectures, and unit testing, plus exposure to GraphQL and observability tools (e.g., Datadog). The position focuses on building enterprise-grade data visualization platforms, leading major product components, and driving scalability and reliability for Instacart’s retailer insights portal. It suits someone who enjoys cross-functional collaboration, leading technical initiatives, and creating intuitive analytics tools that empower large-scale retail partners.
💬 Potential Interview Questions
-
How would you architect a scalable analytics dashboard in React?
Use a feature‑modular structure, server state via React Query/Apollo, route‑level code splitting, and virtualization for large tables/charts to keep TTI and memory in check. -
What are best practices for consuming GraphQL in a data‑heavy app?
Use normalized caching, fragment colocation, query batching/de‑duplication, and schema‑driven types; prefer field-level pagination (Relay cursor) for infinite data. -
How do you design GraphQL schemas for analytics queries?
Model aggregates as explicit types (e.g.,Metric,TimeseriesPoint) with arguments for filters/time ranges; support connections for pagination and avoid over‑fetching through tailored resolvers. -
How do you ensure fast rendering for large datasets and complex charts?
Pre‑aggregate on the server, stream or chunk data, virtualize lists/grids, memoize selectors/props, and offload heavy transforms to Web Workers. -
What’s your approach to reliability and observability on the web?
Instrument RUM for Core Web Vitals and UX funnels, add Datadog logs/metrics/traces with correlation IDs, define SLOs (e.g., error rate, p95 latency) and alert on budget burn. -
How do you test an insights portal end‑to‑end?
Unit test pure logic/hooks, component test charts and tables with RTL, add contract tests for GraphQL (schema + mocked resolvers), and E2E flows with Playwright using stable test data. -
How do you handle authorization and multi‑tenant data boundaries in the UI?
Fetch with tenant‑scoped tokens, enforce server‑side auth on every resolver, and apply client guards feature‑flagged per tenant; avoid leaking IDs via cache scoping and keys. -
How do you improve perceived performance for slow analytics queries?
Use skeletons and optimistic navigation, prefetch on hover/viewport, cache + background refresh, and progressively render above‑the‑fold widgets first. -
How do you ensure accessibility in data visualizations?
Provide table equivalents or data exports, ARIA roles/labels, sufficient contrast and color‑blind‑safe palettes, keyboard interaction, and screen‑reader summaries of key insights. -
How do you lead cross‑functional delivery for a new dashboard feature?
Write an RFC with scope/metrics, align PM/Design/Data early, define SLIs/SLOs and technical milestones, ship behind flags with staged rollout, and iterate based on telemetry and user feedback.
📋 Job Summary
Instacart is hiring a Senior Software Engineer (Web, Remote in Canada: ON, AB, BC, NS) to lead development of enterprise tools that empower retailer partners with powerful analytics and data visualizations. You’ll build scalable web apps using TypeScript, React, and GraphQL, collaborating across teams to shape Instacart’s Retailer Insights platform. Ideal candidates have 5+ years’ experience, strong frontend architecture skills, and a passion for intuitive UX and data-driven solutions. This Flex First role offers CAD \$165K–\$183K base plus equity, and the opportunity to shape the future of retail technology at scale.