Senior Project Manager, CX PMO

Overview

About the Role: Every day, millions of customers and shoppers count on Instacart to deliver — literally. Behind that experience is a Customer Experience organization moving at incredible speed, scaling new capabilities, and rebuilding how support works in an AI-first world. The CX PMO is the engine that makes that work happen on time, on scope, and with the rigor it takes to land outcomes that matter.

As a Senior Project Manager on the CX PMO team, you will lead end-to-end delivery of large and extra-large strategic initiatives across the Customer Experience organization — including Hero Projects and the AI Foundational Initiatives that are reshaping how the PMO operates. You'll operate with significant autonomy, applying professional judgment to ambiguous, interconnected challenges that don't have a clear playbook. You'll partner closely with Senior Managers, Directors, and VP-level stakeholders across CX, Product, Engineering, and Tech Governance, and you'll play a key role in scaling how the PMO works as we build the next generation of AI-enabled operating capabilities.

About the Team: The Instacart CX Project Management Office (PMO) is the operating backbone of Customer Experience at Instacart. We lead the initiatives that shape how CX scales — from Hero Projects that move millions of customer and shopper interactions to the AI foundational work that's redefining how PMOs operate. We partner across CX, Product, Engineering, and Tech Governance to bring structure, alignment, and accountability to workstreams that range from medium complexity to extra-large, cross-functional programs.

We're a small team carrying enterprise-level scope. We move fast, sweat the details, and care deeply about getting the work right — because the work directly shapes the experience for the customers and shoppers we serve. We're now scaling our office to support a growing portfolio of Hero Projects and AI foundational work that will fundamentally change how PMOs operate at Instacart.

About the Job

• Hero Project Ownership: Lead end-to-end delivery of Hero Projects and other L/XL initiatives — owning requirements gathering, planning, cross-functional execution, change management, and closure. Make judgment calls on scope, sequencing, and trade-offs across interconnected workstreams.
• AI Foundational Initiatives: Drive the strategic initiatives that build, scale, and operationalize the PMO's AI-enabled operating model — including intake automation, capacity planning, portfolio dashboards, and the next wave of PM AI capabilities. Apply sophisticated problem-solving to challenges that don't yet have an established playbook.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner with senior leaders across CX, Product, Engineering, Tech Governance, BizSys, Legal, Security, and operational teams (Process, Content, L&D, Quality, WFM, Trust & Safety) to drive alignment, resolve conflicts, and unblock execution.
• Executive Communication & Reporting: Build executive-ready decks, written updates, and visualizations that translate complexity for Director- and VP-level audiences. Own status reporting, metrics, and outcome storytelling — ensuring proper sign-off and visibility from leaders who need it.
• PMO Scale & Framework: Help elevate the team by recommending improvements to PMO standards, frameworks, and best practices — including the operational backbone for how AI scales PM work across the org.
• Pre-Planning Ownership: Lead upstream planning before each half starts — ensuring scope, dependencies, and resourcing are locked before execution begins.
• Resource Coordination & Influence: Manage dependencies and align resources across teams, influencing senior stakeholders without direct authority to proactively contribute to project success.

About You

You're obsessed with the craft of project management — not in a checking-boxes way, but in a "this matters and I want to get it right" way. You take pride in untangling complexity, building clarity from chaos, and seeing a plan come together. You sweat the details, you show up for the team, and you care about every dependency, every stakeholder, and every milestone along the way.

You bring professional knowledge and experience to make judgment calls on a wide range of issues — and you're at your best when navigating novel circumstances that require getting to the root of a problem before solving it. The challenges you take on are usually complex and interconnected, requiring you to weigh multiple factors, set the right goals, and chart a path to meet them.

You operate with autonomy, but you know when to bring others in — making sure leaders who need visibility have it, and that critical decisions get the right sign-off. You help the team do its best work by offering thoughtful recommendations for improvement and building supportive relationships across the PMO and the broader CX organization.

You're as comfortable building the operating model as you are running projects within it. You have a point of view on how PMOs should evolve in an AI-first environment, and you're energized by the opportunity to shape how PM work gets done at scale — for a team that's directly shaping the experience millions of people have with Instacart every day.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of project management experience, ideally within a technology, operations, or customer experience organization.
• Demonstrated success leading L/XL cross-functional programs end-to-end — including scope definition, dependency mapping, executive reporting, and risk management.
• Track record of applying sophisticated problem-solving to ambiguous, interconnected challenges where the path forward isn't pre-defined.
• Strong organizational and communication skills, with the ability to synthesize complexity for Director- and VP-level audiences.
• Experience creating high-quality project artifacts (charters, project plans, status reports, risk logs, executive updates) and presenting them to senior leadership.
• Proven ability to manage dependencies, track milestones, and deliver results on time in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field, or equivalent work experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of progressive PM experience, including independent ownership of XL cross-functional programs.
• Experience working in Customer Experience, SaaS, or e-commerce environments.
• Hands-on experience with AI-enabled PM tooling, automation platforms, or scaling PMO capabilities through technology (e.g., Gumloop, Glean, AI copilots, intake automation, capacity planning tools).
• Familiarity with project management methodologies (Agile, Scrum, or Waterfall) and tools (e.g., Smartsheet, Asana, Jira, or similar).
• Prior experience supporting enterprise-scale system implementations or CX technology rollouts (e.g., Salesforce, Genesys).
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with experience influencing senior leaders and driving alignment across competing priorities.
• PMP, CSM, or other project management certification.
• Experience contributing to or building PMO standards, frameworks, or governance models.
• Track record of scaling PMO operations through automation, AI, or process innovation.