Associate Product Operations Manager

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.

Why this role is on the menu

The Associate Product Operations Manager (APOM) is the delivery layer of Product Ops. That means you own your workstreams from intake to handoff, with the kind of discipline and rigor that makes downstream teams trust what comes from you.

The core scope includes: PCR intake and triage, Product Enablement Package (PEP) production, and launch readiness. You run the PCR lifecycle with quality and care. You write PEPs that people actually use. You take pride in clean handoffs.

This is a rotation-based role. Every 6-12 months you move to a new vertical pod: Consumer, Shopper, Enterprise. You build real product sense across all of them. Each rotation is a workstream you own end-to-end, not a support assignment. That breadth is what sets you up for the next level.

AI fluency isn't optional, but instead it's how the team works and works faster. You use AI tools regularly to accelerate your core deliverables, and you know the difference between a draft that's ready and one that still needs your judgment.

About the Team

Product Operations is organized into three pillars: Vertical Partnership Pods, Intelligence & Systems (the Horizontal), and the Enablement Team. This role is within the Enablement Team.

The Enablement Team is the shared engine that keeps launches moving. It's a centralized pool of team members, deployed to wherever priorities are highest. We execute inside the verticals, use the infrastructure the Horizontal builds, and feed back the cross-domain patterns we see across rotations. Our work is foundational to the team's promise of making outcomes more likely, faster, and more durable.

Your manager manages your deployments and development. Your pod partners are your day-to-day collaborators. The Horizontal is the infrastructure team and your systems partner.

What you'll cook up in your first year

• Own PCR intake end-to-end: validate problem statements, assess routing, and make sure everything is clean before it hits a vertical pod
• Handle Tier 2 triage, the judgment calls that go beyond what the automated system can resolve on its own
• Write and maintain PEPs, using AI-assisted drafts as your starting point and owning the quality, accuracy, and stakeholder fit of the final version
• Drive launch readiness in your assigned area, coordinating with stakeholders so the people who depend on launches aren't caught off guard
• Pull together customer signal and quality data into structured summaries that feed the Horizontal's intelligence work
• Run PRDs through the PRD enabler and deliver results to POMs and Product with clear framing, not just raw output
• Surface at least one cross-domain insight to the Horizontal per deployment — you're in a unique position to see patterns across pods, and that's part of the job
• Use AI as a real part of your workflow: for triage, drafting, research, onboarding — and always edit before you share
• Build the kind of cross-domain product sense across your rotations that's the foundation for cluster ownership at L5

The secret ingredients we're looking for

Must-have pantry staples (Minimum Qualifications)

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 4+ years in product operations, project management, business analytics, or related field, preferably in a technology or product-driven environment.
• Hands-on experience with Jira or a similar project management tool 
• Strong analytical skills, with hands-on experience in SQL and proficiency with Excel and/or Google Sheets.
• Demonstrated use of AI-driven or automation tools to streamline operations.
• Proven ability to collaborate across functions, communicate effectively, and advocate for customers.
  
  

Optional garnishes (Preferred Qualifications)

• Experience in go-to-market planning or product launch operations.
• Prior success in a tech, SaaS, consumer product, or marketplace company.
• Familiarity with BI and data visualization platforms (e.g., Mode, Looker, Tableau).
• Experience establishing customer feedback mechanisms to drive process or product improvements.
• Demonstrated initiative and ownership for cross-team process improvements or automations.

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