Staff Android Engineer, Caper

<div class="content-intro"><p><strong>We're transforming the grocery industry</strong></p> <p><span class="im">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.</span></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>Instacart is a Flex First team </strong></p> <p>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. <a href="https://instacart.careers/remote/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://instacart.careers/remote/source=gmailust=1651869232122000usg=AOvVaw37OlxP8hAKN7nq4YwHQH7e">Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work.</a></p></div><p><br><br></p> <h2>Overview</h2> <p>Instacart’s Caper team is building the next generation of in-store retail technology—from smart carts to connected checkout experiences—powered by Android at the edge. We partner closely with hardware, firmware, payments, security, and cloud teams to deliver reliable, low-latency, and secure experiences that delight retailers, shoppers, and store associates. We’re hiring an Android Engineer to join the Caper Android Platform team. This is not a typical “app” role—you’ll be the technical authority across network reliability (including MQTT and connectivity management), payment terminal integrations, sensor processing, application architecture, and Android platform modernization. You’ll operate at platform depth while influencing product experiences at scale. You’ll help keep our in-store systems running with 99.9% uptime, shepherd cross-team initiatives from design to rollout, and mentor senior engineers across a broader org of Android developers. If you thrive in a fast-paced environment, enjoy working close to hardware, and love solving complex systems problems, this role is for you. This role is remote across the United States and Canada. <br><br></p> <h2>About the Job</h2> <ul> <li>Own reliability and performance for the Android platform that powers Caper devices, setting standards and practices that drive 99.9%+ in-store uptime.</li> <li>Design and harden connectivity layers, including MQTT-based messaging, Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth management, offline-first sync, and intelligent backoff/retry strategies.</li> <li>Integrate and secure payment terminal workflows (e.g., EMV/contactless), partnering with vendors and internal security to deliver resilient, compliant transactions.</li> <li>Build and optimize real-time data pipelines for sensors and peripherals (e.g., barcode, weight, camera, RFID), ensuring low-latency processing and fault tolerance.</li> <li>Modernize Android architecture and tooling (Kotlin, Jetpack, multi-module, DI, testing, CI/CD), guiding migrations and establishing reusable platform libraries and SDKs.</li> <li>Lead cross-team technical initiatives end-to-end—from RFCs and design reviews to staged rollouts and incident response—while mentoring senior engineers and raising the engineering bar.</li> </ul> <p> </p> <h2>About You</h2> <h3><em>Minimum Qualifications</em></h3> <ul> <li>8+ years of professional Android development experience using Kotlin, including Coroutines/Flows and Jetpack, with a track record of shipping and operating production ... (truncated, view full listing at source)