Program Manager, Escalation Management

The job

LIVE Employer public job feed (private-sector employer) Source: the employer's public careers feed · Data: listed 2026-10-30

Job description

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.

Overview

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, and 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.

About the Job

Program Operations & SLA Governance:

• Run the escalation operating rhythm end to end: daily case review, weekly escalation review, monthly business review, and quarterly calibration of severity criteria.
• Keep meeting hygiene tight: agendas, decisions logged, and action items assigned with named owners and due dates.
• Manage a central tracker that captures every escalation signal and root-cause action and routes each to a named owner.
• Publish and drive SLAs, and report adherence, escalation cycle time, and signal-to-action lag to leadership weekly. [Targets to be set]

Proactive Service Recovery:

• Define and maintain risk-detection signals that support early intervention.
• Design recovery paths for known risk vectors, so issues are resolved before users have to escalate.

Root-Cause & Program Delivery:

• Identify and size the frequency and impact of patterns across escalations, and turn them into effective solutions that reduce repeat issues.
• Drive cross-functional execution with Product, Engineering, Operations, and the rest of Customer Experience so every signal has a destination, every action has an owner, and every outcome is measured.

Data, Analytics & Reporting:

• Write SQL queries to investigate spikes, isolate root causes, and answer ad-hoc questions from CX, Product, and Operations leaders.
• Build and maintain dashboards and automated reporting tracking escalation volume, time to resolution, recurring themes, SLA adherence, and partner impact.
• Prepare leaders for key partner meetings, business reviews, and incident readouts with clear, quantified impact.

Process & Playbook:

• Define and improve escalation intake, severity criteria, SLAs, and communication standards.
• Build repeatable processes that scale beyond the team.

About You

Minimum 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.

Preferred Qualifications

• 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.

#LI-Remote

Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work. This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location. Please review our Flex First remote work policy here.

Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role. Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants. Please read more about our benefits offerings here.

For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below.

Explore around this job

Field: Operations and Management Sub-niche: Program management All jobs at Instacart

View this job and apply on the employer's page →

You apply on the employer's page; AtiveSite does not receive or process applications and is not affiliated with the employer. The description above is shown as the source published it.

About the role

This is a — role in the Operations and Management field (Program management) at Instacart.

We could not match this job title to one occupation in the official wage statistics, so no pay estimate is shown. Pay is not in the source listing; ask the employer for the range and compare in the 240 job niches.

How to prepare and behave

This is editorial guidance, not information from the employer.

• Read the whole description and match your examples to its requirements; use the same words the posting uses where they are true for you.
• Research the employer before the interview: what it does, who its customers are and recent news; prepare two or three questions about the work.
• Arrive early (or log in early for a video call), dress one step above the daily dress code, and test your camera and audio beforehand.
• Answer with short stories: the situation, what you did and the result. Give numbers when you have them and never invent them.
• Be honest about gaps; say what you did to learn and how fast you can close them.
• Ask about the team, the first 90 days, how success is measured and the schedule; do not open with salary and time off.
• When pay comes up, know the market range for the occupation and your lowest acceptable offer before you answer; ask for the full package in writing.
• Send a short thank-you message within a day, mentioning one thing you discussed.
• The listing mentions a remote or flexible location. Confirm with the employer whether remote work applies to your state: taxes, licensing and benefits can depend on where you live.

Know your rights as a candidate and an employee:

• U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: prohibited employment practices
• U.S. Department of Labor: Wage and Hour Division
• CareerOneStop (U.S. Department of Labor): job search help, interview tips and resumes
• USA.gov: avoiding job scams

The city

The listing is remote or has no US state we could identify. Read the country guide for pay, taxes, law and cost of living by state.

Where to live

The job city has no coordinates we can place on the map, so no housing comparison is shown. Use the 250 largest cities table to compare rent and income.

Career paths

We could not match this title to one occupation, so here are the other sub-niches in Operations and Management, where your skills may carry over:

Project management (250) Supply chain and logistics (627) Business operations and strategy (1712) Executive and general management (2105)

Distances

This job has no single city we can place on the map (remote, flexible or unmatched location), so no distance table is shown. Browse all Operations and Management jobs with distances from any of the 20 largest cities.

The employer

Instacart is the employer in this listing. See all its open jobs here →

We do not hold headcount or revenue for this employer. Check its careers site and, if it is listed on a stock exchange, its public filings (SEC EDGAR search).

What it is like to work at a company (culture, schedules, benefits) is not in the source data, so we do not describe it. Read the description and ask the questions under "How to prepare".

Other open jobs at Instacart

Similar jobs

Same sub-niche: Program management

All Program management jobs → · All Operations and Management sub-niches →

FAQ

What is the Program Manager, Escalation Management job at Instacart?

A private-sector role in operations and management (program management) listed 10 days ago. The full description is on this page and on the employer's page.

Where is this job?

Remote / flexible (United States). A remote or flexible location is listed; confirm with the employer which states are accepted.

How do I apply?

Use the "View this job and apply on the employer's page" button. AtiveSite does not receive applications.

How much does it pay?

The listing does not publish pay, and we could not match the title to one official occupation.

What is the cost of living there?

See the state or country guide for rent, income and taxes.

How old is this listing?

It was posted on 2026-10-30 (10 days ago). Jobs older than 90 days are not shown.

Are there similar jobs?

Yes: browse program management jobs in the United States.

Sources and terms

• Job data: Instacart careers page public feed (listing dated 2026-10-30). The job disappears from this site when it disappears from the source.
• Wages and projections: BLS OEWS (May 2025) and Employment Projections 2025–35.
• City and county figures: Census Bureau ACS 2020–2024, BEA, BLS QCEW and LAUS, NASA POWER climatology; distances from Census Gazetteer coordinates.

AtiveSite is not affiliated with or endorsed by the employer or any government agency, and does not process applications. Verify every detail with the employer before acting.

Sources

• BLS OEWS (wages and employment by occupation, May 2025)
• BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
• BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• BLS JOLTS
• BLS State and Metro Area Employment
• Census Bureau American Community Survey (via Census Reporter)
• BEA GDP by state and Regional Price Parities
• IRS 2026 tax adjustments
• U.S. Department of Labor, minimum wage by state
• Tax Foundation state income tax rates 2026
• USAJOBS
• USCIS
• U.S. Department of State, visas
• NASA POWER climatology
• GeoNames / Census Gazetteer (coordinates)