Senior Product Manager, Carrot Ads

Instacart's Ads organization is one of the most strategically important and fastest-growing parts of the business, and Carrot Ads sits at the center of that growth. Our Carrot Ads offering enables retailers and partners to use the best of Instacart advertising — our technology, expertise, and brand partnership reach — to monetize their own e-commerce properties. Carrot Ads is one of the fastest-growing parts of Instacart's Ads business and is central to Instacart's strategy for expanding its advertising ecosystem beyond its own properties.

We are looking for a Senior Product Manager to own and drive the Carrot Ads platform. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role that sits at the intersection of complex technical infrastructure, external partner relationships, and strategic business growth. You'll serve as the primary product point of contact for Carrot Ads' largest and most complex API-integrated partners, own the publisher-facing infrastructure that underpins how all Carrot Ads partners operate on Instacart's ads stack, and help drive the strategic direction of the program over tie.

This role offers the rare opportunity to shape a product that matters both internally — as a critical driver of Instacart's overall Ads business — and externally, by powering retail media network (RMN) programs for high-profile retailers. You'll work across nearly every engineering team in the Ads R&D org, collaborate deeply with cross-functional partners across strategy, marketing, and commercial enablement, and interface directly with external partners. This is a fast-moving space where each team member has a genuine opportunity to shape the product, and where demonstrated mastery over time translates into increasing strategic ownership and leadership of the Carrot Ads program overall.

• Serve as the primary product point of contact for Carrot Ads' API-integrated partners — our largest and most complex, including partners like Uber Eats, Thrive Market, and Hy-Vee. Responsibilities include staying current on each partner's ad business performance and needs, acting as the first line of consultation on product requests and partner escalations, attending business reviews, and driving partner-specific product improvements. This ownership directly impacts partner retention and revenue growth.
• Own publisher-facing infrastructure and features that underpin how all Carrot Ads partners integrate with and operate on Instacart's ads stack — including API architecture and documentation, integration via SFPro, retailer-facing controls over how ads serve, ad serving quality, latency, and reliability, data flows and reporting infrastructure, and billing and revenue share systems. Getting these right is critical to enabling existing partners to trust and grow their businesses on our platform, and it unlocks our ability to onboard new partners faster.
• Drive strategic initiatives to expand Carrot Ads offerings into new areas (e.g., in-store, B2B) and identify opportunities to grow the program in new partner segments and verticals.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration and alignment across a wide range of internal partners — including PMs and R&D members across Measurement, Ads Quality, Formats, and Storefront teams, as well as retailer-facing and brand-facing Strategy & Planning, Product Marketing, and Commercial Enablement.
• Over time, as the Carrot Ads business scales and you demonstrate mastery of your scope, take on increasing strategic ownership: leading cross-partner roadmap prioritization, representing Carrot Ads in leadership forums, and eventually serving as the senior PM lead for the Carrot Ads program overall.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of product management experience, with a track record of owning complex, cross-functional product areas independently
• Experience building or owning B2B platform products
• Strong technical acumen; comfortable working directly with engineering on API design, data pipelines, serving infrastructure, or similar
• Experience managing external partner or customer relationships as part of a product role (not just internal stakeholders)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to synthesize complex technical and business context for both engineering teams and executive audiences

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in ad tech, retail media, or marketplace advertising, particularly on the supply/publisher side (e.g., owning publisher-facing ad controls, publisher integrations, or serving infrastructure)
• Familiarity with programmatic advertising concepts: auction mechanics, ad serving, attribution, billing/revenue share, and reporting infrastructure
• Prior experience at a company where the platform you owned was the infrastructure enabling third-party businesses to operate (e.g., a white-label ad platform, a marketplace API, or an embedded commerce product)
• Experience driving strategic expansion into new business verticals or partner segments
• Demonstrated ability to ship in ambiguous, high-stakes environments where the product scope, technical constraints, and business requirements are evolving simultaneously

#LI-Remote