Senior Android Design Technologist

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

About the Role

We are seeking an Android Design Engineer to play a central role in building a world class experience for Caper, our AI powered smart shopping cart. Caper aims to transform the in-store grocery shopping experience by helping customers save time and money while helping retailers grow their business. In this role, you will work with a high-performing, collaborative, cross-functional, and friendly team to improve the quality of our experience via design systems, add delight through motion, prototype future concepts, and accelerate our design-led initiatives. You will collaborate closely with designers, product managers, and engineers.  

 

About the Team

The Caper Team is dedicated to making in-store grocery shopping effortless, useful, and enjoyable for everyone. Caper Design is a team of creative problem solvers representing a range of disciplines across product design, industrial design, service design, and motion/sensory design. We work together to push the boundaries of innovation while shipping amazing experiences. You’ll partner closely with the team to co-create and bring ideas to life. 

About the Job

• Partner with Instacart’s Design Systems and Caper’s Design teams to improve the quality and consistency of the user experience by refining and productionizing design systems, driving UI enhancements.
• Lead design infrastructure improvements, such as transitioning animations from Lottie to Rive, and increasing the configurability of product features.
• Bring innovative concepts to life by building functional prototypes on demo carts, incorporating sensor fusion when required.
• Equip the design team with tools and techniques to create prototypes of varying fidelity (e.g., using tools like Cursor for code generation from Figma designs).
• Accelerate the feature roadmap by directly collaborating with engineering and product teams to write scalable production code that aligns with both the design vision and business needs.

 

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience building and shipping high-quality Android applications with a strong focus on UI development and visual polish.
• Expert-level proficiency in Jetpack Compose, with deep knowledge of layout systems, animation APIs, and accessibility tooling.
• Proven track record of translating design specifications into precise, scalable implementations that maintain visual fidelity across screen sizes and states.
• Comfortable developing with accessibility best practices, including TalkBack support, color contrast, focus behavior, and touch target sizing.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, especially when bridging conversations between design and engineering stakeholders.
• Demonstrated attention to detail in UI implementation, with a portfolio or code samples that show precision, consistency, and visual refinement.
• Highly collaborative mindset, with experience working in tight feedback loops with designers, and a bias toward “show, don’t tell” when communicating design trade-offs.

 

Preferred Qualifications  

• Prior experience as a design engineer or systems engineer embedded within or closely supporting a design org.
• Experience building, maintaining, or extending a design system on Android, including component architecture, token theming, and variant handling.
• Familiarity with motion and interaction design tools such as Rive, Lottie, or custom animation engines—bonus if you've led a transition between platforms.
• Experience using or contributing to design-to-code tools, such as Figma Plugins, Cursor, Relay, or similar.
• Strong grasp of front-of-screen performance optimizations, including frame rendering, transitions, and touch latency, especially in animation-heavy UIs.
• Passion for rapid prototyping and concept validation, especially using hardware or sensor integration (e.g., camera, weight sensor, motion input).
• A strong point of view on how design and engineering can partner effectively, and experience creating tools, processes, or documentation that empower designers to self-serve where appropriate.

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. Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. 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$195,000—$217,000 USDWA$187,000—$208,000 USDOR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI$180,000—$200,000 USDAll other states$162,000—$180,000 USD Apply