Operations Manager, Hardware Operations

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 Caper.ai is a subsidiary of Instacart and an AI company. It leverages cutting-edge AI and computer vision technology to bring an autonomous shopping experience to the store. Its product, the Caper Cart - an AI-powered smart cart equipped with scales, sensors, touchscreens, and computer vision technology, is the cornerstone of the Instacart Platform Connected Stores initiative. Caper builds smart shopping carts powered by deep learning and computer vision to enable a seamless grab-and-go retail experience. Caper’s unique technology is a plug-and-play solution that does not require retail store renovation, operational overhaul, heavy computing, and endless image labeling training. Retailers purchase intelligent shopping carts, and the entire store is upgraded with cashier-less capabilities! Caper is one of the fastest-growing retail automation technology products in the market, costs less than 1% of our competition’s infrastructure, and is already widely adopted in the marketplace. Our cross-functional and durable Product team solves hard customer business problems in ways our customers love. As an Operations Manager, Hardware Operations, you will own end-to-end hardware field operations for Caper carts—deployments, retrofits, and fleet maintenance/repair—driving efficient, high-quality execution across carts in the market. You will build operational rigor through scalable processes, documentation, and analytics, while partnering closely with Program Managers and the Quality team to close the loop between field execution and product quality—surfacing field insights and failure patterns, improving troubleshooting, and driving corrective actions. As we scale to thousands of carts in the field, your work will directly impact uptime, retailer experience, and operational readiness. About the Job Own end-to-end field operations planning and delivery, defining scope, building schedules and operating cadences, aligning parts/logistics readiness, and ensuring on-time, high-quality completion of deployments, retrofits, and maintenance/repair work across the fleet. Own day-to-day hardware field operations execution, including daily triage, dispatch, routing, escalations, and quality follow-through across deployments, retrofits, and maintenance/repair tickets to maximize fleet uptime and SLA adherence. Partner closely with Program Managers and the Quality team to close the loop between field execution and product quality—bringing back field insights, failure patterns, and observations to flag emerging issues, improve troubleshooting, and drive corrective actions—ensuring high-quality outcomes across both technician work and real-world fleet performance. Lead continuous improvement by analyzing operational performance and implementing policies, procedures, and systems that improve throughput, quality, and consisten ... (truncated, view full listing at source)