Here’s How Much This $9.5 Billion Company Pays Its Workers, From Data Scientists to Software Engineers

Instacart is paying corporate workers competitive rates, turning compensation into a recruiting advantage. The grocery delivery company’s latest salary disclosures show that corporate tech workers, from data scientists to software engineers, can earn six-figure salaries.

These earnings are separate from the pay earned by the company’s 600,000 gig workers, who shop and deliver groceries on behalf of customers. Instacart pays gig workers per batch of customer orders, and the per-delivery amount ends up varying by order size, distance and tips. According to ZipRecruiter, the average hourly pay for an Instacart Shopper in the U.S. was $18.33. 

Instacart’s corporate workers, who number about 3,000 as of fiscal year 2025, can take home substantially more. Data from federal work visa filings, viewed by Business Insider, create a picture of a $9.5 billion company that pays aggressively to attract specialized AI, machine learning and senior engineering talent. 

The filings apply to employees who secure H-1B work visas, or visas for foreign workers with specialized skills. The disclosures represent base pay only; they do not include stock grants or bonuses. Instacart submitted over 150 H-1B filings in the year ending September 30, 2025. The Trump administration has recently implemented changes to the H-1B system, adding a $100,000 fee to new applications filed on or after September 21, 2025. 

Here’s how much Instacart pays top tech roles, according to the H-1B filings:

• Data Scientist: $125,000 to $210,000
• Director of Engineering, Machine Learning: $320,000 to $380,000
• Engineering Manager, Software: $220,000 to $290,000
• Manager, Machine Learning Engineering: $260,000 to $280,000
• Senior Computer Vision/AI Engineer: $180,000 to $290,000
• Senior Data Scientist: $170,000 to $265,000
• Senior Engagement Manager: $235,000 to $285,000
• Senior Product Manager: $185,000 to $280,000

How Instacart compares to DoorDash and Uber

Instacart’s corporate tech salaries are in the same league as those from DoorDash and Uber, but with some clear differences. For example, for software engineers, Instacart tends to be more competitive than Uber on base pay, and roughly on par with DoorDash, which has the highest disclosed pay. Instacart paid software engineers from $165,000 to $215,000, while DoorDash paid $105,560 to $359,000, and Uber compensated them $98,516 to $195,300. 

Instacart is facing mounting competition from Amazon, Uber Eats and DoorDash, all of which are scaling their grocery delivery efforts. However, Instacart CEO Chris Rogers, who stepped into the role last year, called competition concerns “overblown” and said the company was monitoring rivals “extremely closely.”

“There is definitely a market for us here and we feel good about our points of differentiation,” Rogers said on an earnings call earlier this month. Instacart reported strong fourth-quarter revenue of $992 million, up 12% from a year earlier. 

Instacart was advertising about 170 open roles on its website at the time of writing. A company spokesperson told Business Insider that they “regularly review compensation to ensure it’s competitive” and that they are “hiring selectively.” 

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