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

Since 2012, Instacart has been focused on making grocery delivery convenient, affordable, and accessible to everyone. We bring fresh groceries and everyday essentials to customers across the US and Canada from nearly 55,000 stores across 5,500 markets. Our mission is to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love, and to achieve that goal, we innovate in a wide range of areas including e-commerce, advertising, and fulfillment.

We use machine learning and Internet-scale data to elevate customer experience, improve efficiency, and reduce cost. As an example, we manage catalog data imported from hundreds of retailers, and we build product and knowledge graphs on top of the catalog data to support a wide range of applications including search and ads.

We are looking for talented Ph.D. students to have an internship in our fast moving team. You will have the opportunity to work on a very large scope of problems in search, ads, personalization, recommendation, fulfillment, product and knowledge graph, pricing, etc.

About the Job

Based on your passion and background, you may choose to work in a few different areas:

  • Query understanding - Using cutting-edge NLP technologies to understand the intent of user queries.
  • Search relevance and ranking - Improving search relevance by incorporating signals from various sources.
  • Ads quality, pCTR, etc. - Improving ads revenue and ROAS.
  • Knowledge graphs - Working on graph data management and knowledge discovery, and creating a natural language interface for data access.
  • Fraud detection and prevention - Using cost sensitive learning to reduce loss.
  • Pricing - Estimating willingness-to-pay, and optimizing revenue and user experience.
  • Logistics - Optimization in a variety of situations, including supply/demand prediction, last mile delivery, in-store optimization, etc.

About You

Minimum Qualifications:

  • Ph.D. student in computer science, mathematics, statistics, economics, or related areas.
  • Strong programming (Python, C++) and algorithmic skills.
  • Good communication skills. Curious, willing to learn, self-motivated, hands-on.
 
Preferred Qualifications: 
  • Ph.D. student at a top tier university in the United States and/or Canada
  • Prior internship/work experience in the machine learning space

Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work. This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location. Please review our Flex First remote work policy here.

Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Please read more about our benefits offerings here. 

For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.

CA, NY, CT, NJ
$50—$50 USD
WA
$47.50—$47.50 USD
OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI
$45—$45 USD
All other states
$42—$42 USD

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At Instacart, we like to think of ourselves as a potluck—where everyone brings something new, different, and flavorful to the table. We believe our team’s wide range of perspectives, experiences and backgrounds enable us to build a better product for our customers. Instacart is for everyone, and we’re committed to fostering diverse and inclusive teams that reflect the communities we serve.

Individuals seeking employment at Instacart are considered without regards to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic. 

Please note: If you apply for more than one job, you will be asked to fill out the questionnaire for each application.  

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In order to track our effectiveness in recruiting a wide range of talent, we invite all applicants to self-identify demographic information. Completion of the form is required as part of our standard application process - but disclosing your demographic information is optional. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

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  • Race/Ethnicity: A person’s racial, ethnic or origin identity. 

  • Disability Status: A person’s physical or mental impairment which may limit one or more of their major life activities. Learn more here. 

  • Military Service: A person who has spent time serving in any branch of the military (retired or active). Learn more here. 

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