Tech & Innovation
Authors: Yuanzheng Zhu, Guanghua Shu, Raochuan Fan, Vinesh Gudla, Tejaswi Tenneti Introduction When people search for items on Instacart, they don’t always type perfectly worded phrases. They might write “bread no gluten” or “x large zip lock” — and that’s okay. Our job is to understand what they mean, not just what they type. This process, called Query Understanding (QU), is the intent engine that...
Nov 21, 2025
Read time: 14 min
Tech & Innovation
Overview Just as Instacart shoppers want to fulfill orders when it works for them, we want them to experience the same flexibility and control when it comes to accessing their earnings. The Instant Cashout feature...
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 4 min
Tech & Innovation
What do you do? I’m a product designer on the Shopper team at Instacart. Currently, I work on the flows and tools the teams at various stores use to fulfill pickup orders for our customers....
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 6 min
Tech & Innovation
What do you do? I design — which I see as the art and science of creating frameworks. At Instacart, I’m working with an incredible team to build design systems, and use them to craft...
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 5 min
Tech & Innovation
What do you do? I’m a product designer on the Consumer Retention and Checkout teams, which are focused on growing our customer base. On Retention, our goal is to help people find value in our...
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 5 min
Tech & Innovation
Learnings from our new class of Carrot U boot camp grads We created Carrot U , Instacart’s very own coding boot camp, to offer high-performing employees in non-technical roles the chance to learn the engineering...
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 7 min
Tech & Innovation
What do you do? I’m on the Shopper Success team, focused on helping shoppers understand and improve their quality. My role is to tie experiences such as customer ratings and education together with the goal...
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 5 min
Tech & Innovation
What do you do? I’m a Senior User Experience Researcher at Instacart, working on Instacart’s Emerging Product and Pickup consumer teams. Most recently, I led the research on launching Instacart’s latest grocery service: In-store pickup!...
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 6 min
Tech & Innovation
What do you do? I’m a user researcher at Instacart and work primarily on fulfillment, which means listening to and learning from shoppers. I also do some research with Instacart customers, mostly around usability testing....
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 4 min
Tech & Innovation
What do you do? I’m a Senior Marketing Designer with the Instacart Brand Team. I’m currently working on a large-scale In-Store Marketing signage project. How did you get into design? I was a Fine Arts...
Aug 18, 2021
Read time: 4 min