Staff Software Engineer, Activation Team

San Francisco, California, United StatesRemoteFull TimeStaff$177,185–$364,795 /yrPosted 2 months agoVisa sponsorship available

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Role summary

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for its Activation team to lead the technical strategy and execution of backend systems critical to the new and returning user experience. This high-impact role involves defining the technical roadmap, hands-on backend development across APIs, event pipelines, and recommendation serving, and building signal infrastructure for ML models. The engineer will collaborate with ML engineers, product managers, and data scientists, drive cross-team initiatives, and ensure system reliability. The role requires 5+ years of backend experience, 2+ years in cross-team project leadership, strong systems design skills, and experience mentoring engineers. The position is full-time, hybrid with minimal in-office requirements, and offers a competitive salary range.

About Pinterest:

Millions of people around the world come to our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities and plan for memories that will last a lifetime. At Pinterest, we’re on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product.

Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other’s unique experiences and embrace the flexibility to do your best work. Creating a career you love? It’s Possible.

At Pinterest, AI isn't just a feature, it's a powerful partner that augments our creativity and amplifies our impact, and we’re looking for candidates who are excited to be a part of that. To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities, we’ll explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI.

Through our interview process, what matters most is that you can always explain your approach, showing us not just what you know, but how you think. You can read more about our AI interview philosophy and how we use AI in our recruiting process here.

As a Staff Engineer on the Activation team, you'll drive the technical strategy and execution for backend systems that power Pinterest's new and returning user experience. This is a high-impact role in a growth engineering org focused on helping users find value on Pinterest quickly, identifying the right technical problems to solve, and moving fast to drive measurable results.

What you'll do:

Lead the technical roadmap for activation backend systems, defining the highest-impact opportunities for new and returning users

Drive hands-on backend engineering across APIs, event pipelines, production systems, and recommendation serving

Build signal infrastructure that captures user intent from entry points and makes it available to recommendation systems

Collaborate closely with ML engineers, building the backend infrastructure that ML models depend on

Partner with product managers and data scientists to translate user problems into technical opportunities

Drive cross-team technical initiatives, authoring design documents and building alignment across engineering orgs

Own system reliability, production readiness, and operational health for activation backend systems

Mentor and develop engineers on the team

What we're looking for:

5+ years of experience building and shipping large-scale backend systems at consumer internet companies

2+ years of experience as a senior IC driving cross-team projects with measurable business impact

Strong product mindset with the ability to identify which technical problems matter most for business impact

Track record of rapid execution and driving projects to completion in ambiguous environments

Strong systems design skills across distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and service-oriented backends

Familiarity with ML infrastructure concepts and ability to build systems that support ML workloads

Strong collaboration and communication skills across engineering and product audiences

Experience mentoring engineers and establishing technical best practices

Demonstrated ability to use AI to accelerate your workflow while maintaining high standards for verification, data integrity, and ownership of final outputs

Degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience

Relocation Statement:

This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

In-Office Requirement Statement:

We recognize that the ideal environment for work is situational and may differ across departments. What this looks like day-to-day can vary based on the needs of each organization or role.

This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration up to 4 times per year. Quarterly in-person collaboration will be held in San Francisco, Seattle or New York.

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At Pinterest we believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring for every employee. In an effort to provide greater transparency, we are sharing the base salary range for this position. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise.

Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.
US based applicants only
$177,185—$364,795 USD
Our Commitment to Inclusion:

Pinterest is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit. We want to have the best qualified people in every job. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, status as a protected veteran, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member) or any other consideration made unlawful by applicable federal, state or local laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you require a medical or religious accommodation during the job application process, please complete this form for support.

Sample Pinterest interview questions

1
Design a typeahead box for a search engine
system designmedium
2
Design a rate limiter
system designmedium
3
Design a product recommendation system
system designmedium
4
Design a system for detecting fraudulent transactions at Pinterest
system designmedium
5
Design a system for managing Pinterest's newsfeed.
system designmedium

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