[Hiring] Program Manager, Escalation Management @Instacart

Role Description

We are seeking a Program Manager to orchestrate how Instacart responds to its most critical escalations, including executive-raised issues and issues from our most strategic retail partners. When something is urgent, ambiguous, and spans multiple teams, you bring clarity, drive resolution, and make sure it doesn’t happen again. This role reports to the Senior Manager of Customer Experience.

You’ll be responsible for moving our model from reactive to proactive. That means:

• Defining the risk signals that trigger early intervention.
• Building recovery paths for known risk vectors.
• Turning recurring issues into data-backed product change requests.

This is a strategic and analytical role for a resourceful professional with strong judgment under pressure. It is critical for building a scalable escalation process that earns the trust of internal stakeholders and key retail partners.

The Customer Experience team ensures that critical issues affecting our retailers, customers, and shoppers are resolved quickly and permanently. The team operates globally across a network of BPO partners and works closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, and Business Development to provide immediate resolution and address systemic root cause issues.

Qualifications

• [5+] years of program or escalation management experience, preferably in customer experience, contact center, or partner operations.
• Proven ability to run cross-functional programs with named owners, published service-level agreements, and measurable outcomes, without direct authority in fast-moving, high-pressure situations.
• Hands-on analytical skills, including strong SQL and experience with visualization tools (e.g., Looker, Mode, Tableau, or similar) to find patterns and prioritize.
• Understanding of contact center metrics (e.g., Consumer Sentiment, first contact resolution, average handle time, Internal Quality Score) and the operational levers that move them.
• Ability to identify the root causes behind changes in key metrics and recommend a mitigation strategy.
• Track record of building reporting that an executive audience actually uses to make decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to synthesize complex topics into a compelling narrative for executives and external partners.
• Sound judgment on what to escalate, to whom, and when, and the ability to navigate ambiguity and shifting priorities, including direct conversations with upset customers, shoppers, and partners.
• Strategic mindset: able to think ahead of where the program is today and help stand up a new operating model rather than maintain an established one.
• High accountability and ownership, with a driven, self-starter approach.

Requirements

• Experience writing product feedback or change requests that Product teams accepted and shipped.
• Experience building or scaling an escalation or incident-management process.
• Experience with de-escalation strategies, including customer relationship management.
• Experience with retail, grocery, e-commerce, or marketplace partners.
• Familiarity with tools like Salesforce, JIRA, Slack, etc.
• Highly collaborative, with a track record of building trust across teams and a desire to help others learn.

Benefits

• Highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work.
• Remote work flexibility.
• Base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location.
• Eligibility for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants.