Staff Software Engineer, Bazel & Go

About the Job - Lead the technical direction for Instacart's Bazel build system, including remote caching, remote build execution (RBE), build performance, and the developer-facing ergonomics of the build. - Lead the technical direction for our Go platform, frameworks, standard libraries, service scaffolding, and patterns that Go engineers across Instacart depend on. - Design and drive multi-quarter initiatives that measurably improve build times, CI reliability, and the local development loop for engineers working in Bazel and Go. - Own the developer experience metrics for the systems you lead, define what "good" looks like, instrument it, and use the data to prioritize investment. - Partner with infrastructure, platform, and product engineering teams to roll out changes to the build system and Go platform with minimal disruption. - Set the technical bar for the systems you own on reliability, performance, upgrade cadence, and developer ergonomics. - Mentor engineers in the team and the broader engineering org; grow the community of Bazel and Go experts at Instacart. - Represent the team in cross-org technical discussions on build, CI/CD, and backend platform direction.

About You - A hands-on technical leader who is equally comfortable in a Bazel BUILD file, a Go service, and a design doc. - Metrics-driven, You use build times, cache hit rates, CI reliability, and developer feedback to guide where to invest. - A multiplier. You make the engineers around you more effective through mentorship, clear technical writing, and pragmatic guidance. - Comfortable driving cross-team change.

You can build consensus for a migration or a platform shift and see it through to adoption.

Minimum

Qualifications - 10+ years of software development experience. - Deep, hands-on expertise with Bazel, including remote caching, remote build execution (RBE), and performance tuning of large build graphs. - Strong production experience writing and operating Go services at scale, with a point of view on structuring large Go codebases (frameworks, dependency management, testing patterns, shared libraries). - Track record of leading cross-team technical initiatives with measurable impact on developer velocity, build performance, or CI reliability. - Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and distributed systems. - Strong technical leadership, driving direction, mentoring engineers, and influencing without direct authority.

Preferred

Qualifications - Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent experience. - Experience migrating a large codebase or monorepo to Bazel, or evolving an existing Bazel setup through major upgrades. - Experience owning or contributing to a Go framework, standard library, or service scaffolding used by a large engineering org. - Experience defining and instrumenting developer productivity metrics (build times, cache hit rates, CI reliability, local dev loop). - Experience at high-growth companies operating developer infrastructure for large engineering organizations. #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.

Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. Please rea d more about our benefits offerings here . For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.

CA, NY, CT, NJ $265,000 - $279,500 USD WA $254,000 - $268,000 USD OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI $243,000 - $256,500 USD All other states $221,000 - $233,000 USD