Senior Applied Scientist II, Ads Optimization

The Advertiser Optimization team is the decision-making engine of Instacart's $1B+ ads business, owning systems for Bidding, Pacing, Budgeting, and Targeting. The mission is to maximize realized Advertiser Value by deciding when to participate, how much to bid, and how fast to spend, balancing User Experience and Platform Revenue. This role leads algorithmic direction using control theory, constrained optimization, and auction economics, translating frameworks into production code that makes per

Graduate degree (Masters or PhD) in operations research, applied mathematics, control systems, computational economics, or a related quantitative field. 8+ years building and deploying optimization or control systems in production. Strong foundation in at least two of: feedback control theory (PID, MPC), convex and stochastic optimization, auction theory and mechanism design, dynamic programming. Proficiency in Go, Java, C++ for production systems and Python for data analysis. Ability to scale