Where can Instacart employees work remotely from?

US employees can work remotely from any state except Alaska and the US Territories, and Canadian employees from Ontario, Alberta, or British Columbia. Instacart has no return-to-office date, though a small set of roles such as Workplace Managers, IT, and Regional Ops must work from a specific location or time zone.

Does Instacart have offices, and do I have to use one?

Yes. Instacart keeps offices in San Francisco (its headquarters), Toronto, and New York City, and they are open to all employees to drop in whenever they choose. Working from an office is optional for most roles under the Flex First model.

How does Instacart keep remote teams connected in person?

Through Team Jams, in-person gatherings held a few times a year at the team, department, or company level, plus company-wide events. Attendance is optional and Instacart covers all travel expenses for these get-togethers.

What does Instacart provide for a home office setup?

Flex First includes a stipend to outfit your work-from-home setup and monthly internet reimbursements. Employees also get a monthly $100 personal wellness stipend, or the local equivalent, on top of the setup support.

What kinds of roles does Instacart hire remotely?

Recent openings skew heavily toward engineering, machine learning, and data science, alongside product, sales, finance, and people teams. Most postings are listed as remote across the United States and Canada, often as paired US and Canadian listings for the same role.

Principal Computer Vision Engineer

Instacart

Hybrid

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. Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work.

Overview

At Arpalus, recently acquired by Instacart, we build AI-powered computer vision and AR technology that turns a phone camera into a precise sensing tool - real-time
object detection, scanning, and spatial understanding shipped as a mobile product. Our tech runs on real devices, in real environments, under messy real-world conditions.

We're a small, fast-moving team and we're looking for a Principal Computer Vision Engineer who already works that way too.

You'll join our core AI team and help craft best-in-class perception systems thatpower our real-time retail analytics. You'll solve genuinely hard problems in computer
vision, bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and highly optimized production pipelines. You'll work hands-on, architecting solutions that seamlessly blend classic computer vision techniques with modern deep learning.

In this role, you'll partner closely with our mobile and backend teams to deliver unique capabilities. As a Principal Computer Vision Engineer, you'll help shape the technical strategy for the AI group, influence direction across our training and inference codebases, and ship high-quality, observable algorithms at scale.

We value clear communication, practical problem solving, and ownership. If you thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment where you can roll up your sleeves, make
thoughtful tradeoffs, and see your work move key metrics in real time, you'll feel right at home here.

About the Job

Architect and Own: Drive the evolution of our core computer vision pipelines, taking algorithms from initial research and training through to highly optimized production deployment.
Blend Classic & AI: Design and implement robust classic computer vision algorithms alongside deep learning architectures to solve complex spatial, alignment, and tracking challenges.
Model Development: Train, evaluate, and fine-tune state-of-the-art deep learning models for object detection, classification, and advanced segmentation.
Optimize for Production: Build and optimize high-performance inference pipelines in Python and C++, leveraging optimization tools like TensorRT and CUDA to ensure low-latency execution.
Technical Leadership: Drive technical excellence across the AI stack, evaluating new architectures, standardizing our training methodologies, and making pragmatic tradeoffs between accuracy, speed, and compute constraints.
Deliver End-to-End: Handle technical design, clean architecture, implementation, observability, and iterative improvements of our perception engine.

Minimum Qualifications

6+ years of industry experience in computer vision, machine learning, or a related field.
Deep expertise in classic computer vision techniques, including strong practical knowledge of optical flow, multi-view geometry, feature matching, and homography
estimation (e.g., using OpenCV).
Strong foundational understanding of modern deep learning architectures, specifically for object detection, image classification, and semantic/instance segmentation.
Production-level programming skills in Python.
Extensive hands-on experience with PyTorch and building scalable model training andevaluation pipelines.
Proven track record of optimizing complex algorithms for deployment in resource-constrained or real-time environments.

Preferred Qualifications

Familiarity with state-of-the-art segmentation frameworks and zero-shot/foundation models (e.g., SAM, Mask2Former, Grounding DINO).
Experience working alongside mobile teams to integrate computer vision models into native SDKs (iOS/Android).
Experience translating computer vision algorithms into Apple frameworks and iOS.
Background in retail tech or AR-based scanning applications.

Benefits & Perks

Health & Wellness

Health Insurance

Comprehensive medical insurance coverage provided to all employees.

Dental Insurance

Dental insurance bundled with comprehensive health coverage.

Vision Insurance

Vision coverage bundled with comprehensive health benefits.

Life Insurance

Standard employer-provided life insurance coverage.

Disability Insurance

Standard disability insurance coverage for short-term and long-term needs.

Wellness Programs

Physical and mental wellness programs including memberships and personal wellness support.

Mental Health Benefits

Mental wellness programs including memberships and stipends supporting employee mental health.

Fitness Stipend

A monthly personal wellness stipend usable on wellness, personal care, family, home, and more.

Financial

401(k) / Retirement Plan

Employer-sponsored 401(k) retirement plan for US employees and RRSP for Canadian employees.

401(k) Match

Employer matches 401(k) contributions for US employees and RRSP contributions for Canadian employees.

Equity / RSUs

Instacart roles include a new-hire equity grant and annual refresh grants.

Financial Planning

Origin financial planning services provided as a financial wellness benefit.

Time Off

Unlimited PTO

Flexible paid time off policy with no set cap on vacation days.

Sabbatical

Four week sabbatical at four years of service, called the "Four Year Fill-Up".

Remote & Equipment

Home Office Stipend

Work-from-home stipend provided to outfit home office setup for Flex First employees.

Internet Stipend

Monthly internet reimbursement for remote and Flex First employees.

Family & Care

Fertility Benefits

Modern family planning coverage that supports all family types and paths to parenthood.

Parental Leave

Paid parental leave available for all parents regardless of caregiver role.

Professional Growth

Learning & Development Budget

Customized internal learning programs paired with an annual professional development allowance for employees.

Culture & Perks

Employee Product Discount

Free Instacart+ membership granting grocery delivery discounts on the company's own product.

Charity Matching

Annual employee donation matching plus Carrot Credits donation funds granted to new hires and at anniversary milestones.

Volunteer Time Off

Paid volunteer weeks and community service opportunities through the Instacart Serves volunteer program, including a virtual volunteer session during onboarding.

Employee Resource Groups