Skill Compatibility Diagnostics
Live technical match evaluated against role architecture & expected skills.
Consider reviewing the missing technical prerequisites before submitting your application.
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About the Role
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.
Overview
Instacart's mission is to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. Online Grocery is the heart of that mission — the products millions of customers rely on every day and the team that builds them. We're looking for a Chief of Staff, Online Grocery to partner with the General Manager who leads this business and its product and R&D organization of ~200 people across product, design, research and technical program management.
People, operations and programs are the core of the work — but what should energize you is what that work makes possible. A Chief of Staff here helps the organization operate at its best: more cohesive, clearer in its purpose, sharper and faster in how it makes decisions and operates, and enabled to do the thing that matters most — building products our customers love. If you're motivated by improving how a team works, and serve as a multiplier on everything the team can ship, this is your role.
This is a highly strategic and operational individual-contributor role (no direct reports) for someone exceptionally organized, has strong business and strategic sense, high in empathy, and who has an understanding of how product, design, and engineering teams work.
Key Technical Responsibilities
- check_circle Own and continuously improve the business rhythm for the GM and the organization — leadership team syncs, all-team meetings, monthly and quarterly business reviews, planning reviews, organizational communications, and Online Grocery segments of company-wide all-hands.
- check_circle Manage the operating cadence for the GM — prioritizing and delegating workstreams, ensuring the right things get the right attention at the right time.
- check_circle Improve how the organization decides: clarify decision rights and the questions that matter, build the frameworks and pre-reads that bring options into focus, and remove the friction that slows good calls.
- check_circle Capture and sharpen decisions once made, ensure they're communicated to the right stakeholders, and close the loop on execution.
- check_circle Shape and run the substance of the leadership team offsites: objectives, agenda, pre-reads, the hard discussions, decisions, and follow-through.
- check_circle Be a trusted thought partner to the GM and a credible problem-solving partner to product and R&D leaders.
- check_circle Prepare briefings and coordinate research for the GM's meetings with partners and key leaders — identifying goals, talking points, and relevant context.
- check_circle Partner with the GM, HR and finance to manage the organization's headcount budget.
- check_circle Drive the calendar, planning, and content for upward communication and alignment with the C-suite and the board on Online Grocery priorities.
- check_circle Support the GM in preparing content for speaking engagements.
- check_circle Help the GM spot, diagnose, and get ahead of issues across the organization — bringing structured, candid read-outs and early signals.
- check_circle Partner with the GM and HR to address relationship and culture dynamics across the team and create a high-trust, high-performance leadership team culture.
- check_circle Turn signals like engagement surveys into action — working across the organization to develop the right plans, pressure-test them, and ensure execution.
- check_circle Help the GM kick off and drive annual and long-range planning for Online Grocery.
- check_circle Take ambiguous new efforts for the GM from unclear to fully underway — creating clarity and a plan, identifying DRIs, and setting up decisions.
- check_circle Proactively identify and take ownership of emerging opportunities and risks before they become blockers.
Prerequisites & Qualifications
- check 10+ years of work experience
- check R&D experience — earned in a direct R&D role (product, design, engineering, or technical program management), an adjacent role embedded with R&D teams, or as a Chief of Staff within an R&D organization
- check Consulting, corporate strategy/operations, or finance background and experience working directly with executives
- check Working fluency to navigate a product, design, and engineering organization at scale, and to be a true problem-solving partner to R&D leaders rather than a coordinator
- check High EQ and a genuinely people-oriented instinct — builds trusted relationships, reads organizational dynamics, and bridges leadership and teams
- check Outstanding written and verbal communication at an executive level
- check Strong analytical skills, and a commitment to consistently high-quality work
- check Exceptional program management: organized, effective, and relentless at driving multiple hard initiatives forward to deadline at once
- check Ability to travel 10%
- check Experience designing and facilitating leadership offsites and driving organizational, culture, or operating-model change (Preferred)
- check Experience building with AI (e.g., prototypes, automations, or agents) in a professional setting (Preferred)
- check Experience within high-growth, technology-driven companies (Preferred)
About Instacart Greenhouse Board
Verified hiring organization details.
Instacart Greenhouse Board is a remote hiring entity operating within the United States technology and software sector, associated with Instacart's broader recruitment and organizational infrastructure. Instacart is a leading grocery technology company in North America, operating an online grocery shopping and delivery service that connects customers with retailers. The engineering and technology teams at Instacart build and maintain complex distributed systems, logistics platforms, machine learning models for recommendations and search, and scalable web and mobile applications.