Taxonomist
OVERVIEW
Every few years, a company appears that transforms an industry. Instacart has the chance to be one of those companies, and you could be one of the early people that shape Instacart and help us change the way people shop.
In a few short years we've launched same-day delivery in nearly 100 major US markets, provided flexible work to tens of thousands of Personal Shoppers on our platform, and have sold and delivered more than $1B in grocery products.
The Instacart Product Team is dedicated to making grocery shopping effortless for everyone. By helping take care of the shopping, we help people get great food and give them back time so they can do what matters most to them. We’re finding solutions to large-scale challenges that will forever change the way people feed themselves and their loved ones.
We are currently hiring our first Taxonomist to manage our Catalog’s product taxonomies. Our Catalog’s data powers our customer experiences, our advertisements, our shopper app, and our retailer platform - as such, this role works closely with our product and engineering teams across our whole business. Given this is our first taxonomist hire, you will have tremendous opportunity to shape the direction of how taxonomies power our business. You will be joining our rapidly growing Catalog team - a group responsible for managing over 5 billion data points (and growing) that represent assortments from retailers from across North America.
The Merchandising and Enrichment group within Catalog is responsible for defining how products should be represented to customers. We spend a lot of time focusing on questions like - What do customers want to know when they buy meat for dinner? How do we help customers discover new products to love by knowing more about what’s in the grocery store than they do? What data is needed to tailor our Catalog to a specific customer’s preferences and dietary needs? You’ll be joining a team of individuals that are passionate about answering these questions.
ABOUT THE JOB
- Experience working on Catalogs at a technology company is recommended
- You will be conducting research about our taxonomy structure to make sure it meets customer and business needs. You will also define new taxonomy elements and associated metadata.
- You will champion our Catalog taxonomy across our business and establish a governance framework for our taxonomies and metadata.
- You will have a voice in any work that impacts the organization of content such as UX and design. This will include working closely with product and engineering teams to define solutions needed to improve taxonomy management, data application, and ultimately customer experiences.
- You will create training materials and act as an advisor whenever questions arise to ensure products meet our taxonomy and metadata standards. This includes coordinating with our outsources in ensuring products are classified and tagged correctly and defining workflows for data curation.
- This role requires you to make mindful decisions about how we define our data standards, while moving quickly as our business scales.
ABOUT YOU
- You are an expert in creating and maintaining taxonomy and metadata schemas.
- You are experienced in managing large data curation and assignment projects.
- You know how to balance the needs of various stakeholders across an organization.
- You have excellent communication skills.
- You have worked with external vendors previously.
- You have experience using SQL.