Staff Software Engineer, Bazel & Go

OVERVIEW

The Developer Experience team at Instacart is the force multiplier for our 1000+ engineers. We define and build the platforms, tools, and practices that enable Instacart engineers to ship high-quality software faster — from AI-powered code review to build infrastructure, developer onboarding, and local development environments. Our success is measured in developer velocity: how quickly an engineer can take an idea from concept to production.

As a Staff Software Engineer on Developer Experience, you will lead two of the pillars that Instacart engineering is built on: Bazel (our build system) and Go (one of our core backend languages). You will own the technical direction for how thousands of daily builds run and how our Go services are structured, from remote build execution and caching to the frameworks, libraries, and patterns Go engineers use every day. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You'll write code, set architectural direction, and partner across the org to move engineering-wide metrics on build performance, CI reliability, and developer velocity.

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.