Staff Technical Program Manager

Overview

About the Role

This role offers the opportunity to put technical expertise and leadership skills towards driving high impact in programs that enhance our products, platforms, and the experiences of millions of customers, shoppers, retailers, advertisers, and the broader developer community. As a (Senior) Staff Technical Program Manager at Instacart, you will be at the forefront of our mission to transform the industries across grocery, retail, and restaurants by delivering on Instacart’s most complex and impactful efforts. You will be the owner of programs and associated business and technical outcomes, working closely with cross-functional teams across Engineering, Product, Data Science, Product Design, Business Development, Marketing, and others to define success, the strategy, requirements, track key metrics, lead execution, mitigate risks, and deliver on time with high quality outcomes. We are looking for driven individuals who thrive in a fast-paced Engineering environment, are passionate about quality and team performance, and feel comfortable making decisions on scope and technical trade-offs as well as building executive-level narratives. You will be required to operate independently, identify issues and opportunities proactively, lead from the front and by example, and be seen as a leader by senior leadership as well as various cross-functional teams across the broader organization.

Every day we solve increasingly complex business and technical problems that involve deep thinking and cross-functional collaboration to tackle. You will drive towards outcomes that have incredibly high impact across each of our 4-sided marketplaces: customers, shoppers, brands, and retailer partners. You will set the bar for what it means to deliver first-class, high quality experiences for our customers. Join us in this opportunity to lead a digital transformation of the industry by building technology that’ll power the next wave of innovative, scalable, and robust experiences to our customers.

About the Team

The Technical Program Management team is an integral part of the Instacart R&D organization. TPM operates within Engineering but drives priorities independently, so we align ourselves with the company’s highest priorities, biggest tech and product challenges, and our role strengths. Our team tackles some of the meatiest problems as we lead Instacart’s products, platforms, and operational excellence forward. Our work and its impact spans all sides of the marketplace: from using advanced ML to offer highly personalized replacements for out of stock items, to helping people save money through coupons and deals for their favorite brands, to unlocking innovative ways to shop for and deliver groceries, to evolving our ML tech stack and data infra, and so much more. We are seen as trusted thought partners to deliver on Instacart’s strategy at scale and enable strong cross-team and functional collaboration that results in teams across the company to achieve more together.

About the Job 

• You are seen as a leader within the Instacart consumer space, and seen as a trusted thought partner to organizational and cross-functional leaders.
• You “see around corners”, inform priorities, and are sought after to undertake the most challenging, unscoped problems.
• You lead the strategy, planning, roadmap, and technical execution of XL-sized programs with a high degree of uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity, and visibility.
• You are a natural key partner and influencer with Engineers, Product Managers, Product Designers, Data Scientists and other cross-functional partners to define outcomes, key results, and path to deliver. You define and deliver on requirements and execution plans, and manage an overall program's progress and outcome.
• You own clear and effective communication with stakeholders, including senior leadership, while raising priorities, risks, and course changes independently and proactively. You have shown you can influence decisions by senior leaders.
• You create a win-win by growing the pie. You foster a culture of teamwork and shared goals, create a collaborative and motivating team environment, and drive the right balance of process and velocity to ensure efficient, high quality, yet timely delivery.
• You are not only seen as a clear leader within TPM, but you regularly contribute more broadly to Instacart’s success by suggesting and driving organization-wide initiatives as well as mentoring and coaching others around you.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of post-graduation experience in a technology field, preferably as a technical program manager, product manager, software engineer or engineering manager (technical domain), or related technical discipline.
• Experience in defining, delivering, derisking, and clearly exhibiting a combination of product and engineering prowess. You can clearly demonstrate how you are an angle-changer to outcomes.
• Can wear multiple hats to create strategy memos, write functional specs, define high level technical requirements, derive insights from structured data, and leverage LLMs as a productivity multiplier in addition to defining program structure & strategy.
• Experience in managing complex, ambiguous, multi-org programs end-to-end, from early conceptualization and definition to launch, throughout a software development lifecycle.
• A strong communicator, collaborator, and natural storyteller. You can distill multiple streams of information, convey priorities and risks, and build a strong narrative for stakeholders. 
• Bring executive presence with senior leaders. You are comfortable writing detailed plans as well as upleveling to an executive-level deck.
• Show strong ownership, accountability, and intellectual curiosity to understand executional and technical problems in depth, identify potential issues, and proactively incorporate mitigations into a realistic plan.
• Exhibits a growth mindset, can give and receive ongoing feedback, and can swiftly adapt to operating norms across diversity of teams.
• Bachelor's degree or greater in a technology or engineering discipline.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in a technology or engineering discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to manage a cross-functional team of technical professionals.
• Shown ability to advocate and land architectural and technical decisions at the highest engineering leadership levels.