Senior Applied Scientist II, Ads Optimization @Instacart

Overview

The Advertiser Optimization team at Instacart is responsible for the decision-making systems that drive Instacart's $1B+ ads business. The team focuses on Bidding, Pacing, Budgeting, and Targeting to maximize Advertiser Value while balancing User Experience and Platform Revenue. The Senior Applied Scientist II will lead the algorithmic direction of these systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and evolve real-time bid optimization systems to translate advertiser goals into optimal auction bids.
• Build budget pacing algorithms to allocate a finite daily budget across stochastic demand.
• Develop analytical frameworks connecting bidding, pacing, and budgeting into an optimization objective.
• Shape auction mechanics including reserve pricing and bid-to-price mapping.
• Own the research-to-production loop: diagnose system behavior using data, formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and measure impact.

Requirements

• Graduate degree (Masters or PhD) in operations research, applied mathematics, control systems, computational economics, or a related quantitative field.
• 8+ years of experience building and deploying optimization or control systems in production environments.
• Strong foundation in feedback control theory, convex and stochastic optimization, auction theory, and dynamic programming.
• Proficiency in Go, Java, C++, or Python for production systems and data analysis.
• Ability to translate mathematical formulations into production code running at scale.

Benefits

Instacart offers competitive compensation and benefits, including a new hire equity grant and annual refresh grants.

Location

Remote (United States)

How to Apply

Please visit the Instacart careers page to submit your application.