About this role
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
Caper, an Instacart team building AI-powered checkout experiences, is on the cutting edge of physical AI—bringing computer vision and on-device machine learning to the real world through smart carts and connected retail hardware.
We are seeking a Senior Technical Program Manager to lead complex, multi-quarter machine learning & computer vision engineering programs that power the heart of Caper: high-quality data pipelines, robust model training and evaluation, and reliable on-cart deployment at scale. You will partner closely with computer vision and machine learning engineers, Android engineers, hardware teams, product, operations, and the executive team to build the roadmap, drive execution, and deliver measurable improvements to model performance and in-store outcomes.
This role is ideal for a builder who thrives in a fast-paced, evolving environment and enjoys rolling up their sleeves to turn complex, cross-functional work into predictable delivery. Remote-friendly across the US and Canada, with a preference for West Coast time zones to maximize collaboration with our partners.
About the Job
- Own end-to-end execution of ML programs across data collection, labeling, training, evaluation, and on-device deployment—defining scope, milestones, risks, and success metrics tied to accuracy, latency, and in-store experience.
- Build and maintain cross-functional plans with computer vision/ML, Android, hardware, MLOps, data engineering, QA, and field operations; run cadences, surface tradeoffs, and drive on-time, high-quality releases.
- Lead data operations at scale, including in-store capture, synthetic generation, and third-party annotation—setting data quality bars, SLAs, and privacy standards in partnership with Legal and Security.
- Establish rigorous evaluation frameworks that connect offline metrics and on-device performance to business outcomes (e.g., recognition accuracy, shrink reduction, throughput), including pilots and A/B tests in stores.
- Drive deployment readiness and reliability: model packaging for edge devices, rollout plans, monitoring and alerting, incident response, and postmortems with clear, actionable follow-ups.
- Communicate program status and insights to stakeholders and executives; proactively manage dependencies and risks across a ~25-person cross-functional org and external vendors.
About You
Minimum Qualifications
- 6+ years of technical program management experience, ideally leading end-to-end ML/AI programs from data to production.
- 3+ years working on computer vision or edge/on-device ML for embedded, mobile, or hardware-integrated products.
- Proven track record delivering 3+ production ML model releases or ML-powered features with measurable impact on product metrics.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or a related technical field; or equivalent practical experience.
- Hands-on familiarity with the ML lifecycle, including data pipelines, labeling/annotation workflows, model training/evaluation, and MLOps/CI-CD for ML.
- Ability to query and analyze data using SQL and basic Python to validate assumptions and interpret model and product performance.
- Experience coordinating cross-functional teams of 10+ stakeholders, including external vendors, with strong risk, dependency, and change management.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive-level reporting and decision facilitation.
- Willingness to travel to stores, labs, and partner sites as needed (up to 15%).
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in retail technology, robotics, autonomous systems, or other physical AI domains.
- Knowledge of on-device inference optimization and tooling (e.g., TensorRT, Core ML, TensorFlow Lite) and performance tradeoffs on constrained hardware.
- Background establishing data quality standards and managing third-party labeling vendors at scale.
- Familiarity with privacy, security, and compliance considerations for in-store data collection (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
- Graduate degree in a relevant technical field.
- Experience integrating hardware components (cameras, depth sensors, scales) and leading calibration/validation workflows.
- Ability to create dashboards and operational telemetry for model and program health using tools like Looker, Mode, or similar.
#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.
Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Please read more about our benefits offerings here.
For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.
Other facts
About Instacart
Instacart, the leading grocery technology company in North America, works with grocers and retailers to transform how people shop. The company partners with more than 1,500 national, regional, and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 85,000 stores across North America on the Instacart Marketplace. Instacart makes it possible for millions of people to get the groceries they need from the retailers they love, and for approximately 600,000 Instacart shoppers to earn by picking, packing and delivering orders on their own flexible schedule. The Instacart Platform offers retailers a suite of enterprise-grade technology products and services to power their e-commerce experiences, fulfill orders, digitize brick-and-mortar stores, provide advertising services, and glean insights. With Instacart Ads, thousands of CPG brands – from category leaders to emerging brands – partner with the company to connect directly with consumers online, right at the point of purchase. With Instacart Health, the company is providing tools to increase nutrition security, make healthy choices easier for consumers, and expand the role that food can play in improving health outcomes. For more information, visit www.instacart.com/company.
What you'll do
- Own end-to-end execution of machine learning programs, including data collection, training, and deployment. Build and maintain cross-functional plans and lead data operations at scale.
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