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.
Pinterest's Growth org reaches hundreds of millions of users by helping them discover Pinterest from across the web — through search engines, generative engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews), and other emerging surfaces. We're hiring a Staff Software Engineer to be the product engineering anchor across two closely partnered teams: our SEO Product team, which owns Pinterest's durable organic discovery channels, and a new exploratory team focused on AI-first growth products.
This is a hands-on technical role for a strong product engineer who wants to architect and ship AI-powered growth experiences at scale, partnering closely with ML teams to take capabilities from prototype to production. You'll set the technical bar through your own code and architecture — not by stepping into management.
What you'll do:
- Architect and build the production systems that AI/ML capabilities ship through across two Growth teams: APIs, data pipelines, content systems, evaluation and monitoring infrastructure.
- Partner with Pinterest's centralized ML org and applied research teams to productize AI/ML capabilities at scale — defining service interfaces, building eval pipelines, and managing latency, cost, and quality tradeoffs.
- Design and build the cross-team technical foundations that serve both teams: AI evaluation systems, content quality pipelines, agent skill platform, knowledge brain.
- Set the technical bar across two teams operating an AI-native engineering model: AI in every part of the SDLC, eval-driven shipping, prototype-first culture.
- Mentor engineers across both teams as a peer Staff IC, deepening their technical work without managing them.
What we're looking for:
- 8+ years of product / systems engineering experience, with a strong track record shipping production systems at scale that touch real users.
- Cross-team technical leadership: you've been the architectural anchor on multi-team initiatives, set direction others build on, and mentored through code.
- Working knowledge of common ML/AI techniques (supervised learning, embeddings, ranking, LLMs, evaluation methodology) — enough to scope ML projects, reason about ML system design, and collaborate effectively with MLEs.
- Strong track record partnering with ML/research teams to ship AI-powered features in production.
- Demonstrated AI-augmented engineering practice — fluent use of Cursor / Claude Code / agentic tools, with a clear approach to validating AI-generated work.
- Upsell, influence the scope of the team (e.g. cross team collaboration on potential signal sharing and other opportunities )
- Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
- Nice to have
- Direct hands-on experience shipping applied ML, LLM/VLM, or agentic systems in production
- Domain experience in search, discovery, recommendations, ranking, growth, or SEO
- Experience as the product-engineering counterpart on an AI-first product launch from prototype to scale
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 1x per quarter and therefore needs to be in a commutable distance from one of the following offices Palo Alto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Seattle.
#LI-CL5
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.
Our Commitment to Inclusion:
Skills Required
- 8+ years of product / systems engineering experience, shipping production systems at scale
- Cross-team technical leadership and experience setting architecture for multi-team initiatives
- Working knowledge of ML/AI techniques (supervised learning, embeddings, ranking, LLMs, evaluation methodology)
- Track record partnering with ML/research teams to ship AI-powered features in production
- Demonstrated AI-augmented engineering practice and fluency with agentic tools (Cursor / Claude Code)
- Bachelor's/Master's degree in Computer Science or relevant field, or equivalent experience
- Direct hands-on experience shipping applied ML, LLM/VLM, or agentic systems in production
- Domain experience in search, discovery, recommendations, ranking, growth, or SEO
- Experience as the product-engineering counterpart on an AI-first product launch from prototype to scale
Pinterest Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Pinterest and has not been reviewed or approved by Pinterest.
-
Fair & Transparent Compensation — Compensation is considered competitive in core technical roles, with clearly defined base, bonus, and RSU components. Vesting schedules and pay elements are articulated clearly, supporting visibility into total rewards.
-
Parental & Family Support — Policies include substantial paid parental leave globally alongside fertility and family‑building benefits, adoption assistance, and dedicated caregiver supports. Communications also highlight a phased return‑to‑work approach.
-
Flexible Benefits — PinFlex enables role‑dependent hybrid/remote work with home‑office, connectivity, and commuter support, plus the option to work internationally for a limited period with approval. Time away is reinforced by a paid company shutdown and generous vacation framing.
Pinterest Insights
What We Do
Pinterest is the visual inspiration platform people around the world use to shop products personalized to their taste, find ideas to do offline and discover the most inspiring creators. Today, more than 460 million people come to the platform every month to explore and experience billions of ideas that have been saved. We’re proud to help people to discover and do what they love.
.jpg)
