Machine Learning Engineer II, Fraud

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’re seeking a machine learning engineer to help shape the vision and technical strategy for leveraging machine learning to detect and prevent abuse across key workflows like identity, payments, and customers. This role involves driving high-impact projects, influencing cross-functional roadmaps, mentoring engineers, and implementing cutting-edge LLM and ML technologies in a fast-paced, high-growth environment to keep Instacart secure.

About the Team - Instacart's Fraud & Identity team protects every customer, shopper, and retailer on the platform from abuse, shopper fraud, and payment fraud. We build and operate cutting-edge real-time systems, signals pipelines, and internal tools to stop bad actors while keeping good users moving friction-free. As Instacart continues to grow, new attack vectors arise every day—join us to stay ahead of the curve and out-innovate fraudsters.

About the Job

• Design & development ML models that power fraud detection and prevention at scale.
• Use your expertise to architect robust and scalable solutions for real-time fraud decisioning systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners—data scientists, risk managers, and product teams—to define and drive strategies for fraud and identity protection.
• Solve ambiguous technical and business challenges independently, taking full ownership over outcomes.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 2+ years of professional experience in software engineering in ML modeling development and leadership.
• Proven ability to design and operate complex ML modeling at scale (both technical scalability and organizational impact).
• Demonstrated leadership: ability to mentor and level up peers, as well as communicate technical trade-offs with stakeholders.
• Passion for fraud and risk tech: a strong grasp of security, real-time decisioning, machine learning systems, or similar domains.

Preferred Qualifications

• LLM modeling and application experience is strongly preferred