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.
The Storage Services team operates Pinterest's scalable online structured data storage platform—supporting both SQL-based table models and complex graph data structures—managing 100TB+ datasets and serving over 1.5M queries per second across many of Pinterest's most important products. We're looking for an exceptional Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical strategy and execution of our storage infrastructure initiatives, defining how these systems are designed, built, and operated. You'll drive innovation across distributed SQL, high-throughput/low-latency query processing, graph workloads, and the developer experience for storage clients.
What you’ll do:
- Provide technical guidance and direction to a high-performing team building reliable, performant, and cost-efficient storage systems that operate at massive scale and power business-critical applications across the company.
- Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of online structured storage services supporting both SQL/table-style and graph-style workloads over large-scale datasets.
- Drive cross-functional strategic initiatives to modernize the storage tech stack—including transitioning datasets and workloads onto the TiDB backend—while advancing reliability, scalability, cost efficiency, and developer velocity.
- Improve query throughput and latency across systems handling 100TB+ datasets and 1.5M+ queries per second, using rigorous measurement, experimentation, and performance engineering.
- Use AI to accelerate system design and decision-making—prototyping approaches, exploring and comparing architectural options, and synthesizing findings—while applying judgment and verification to ensure correctness and quality.
- Use AI to automate repeatable operational work (documentation, runbooks, reporting, and QA checks), freeing the team to focus on high-leverage engineering.
- Serve on the Storage Services on-call rotation—monitoring, responding to alerts, diagnosing and resolving critical issues, and communicating status—and set the bar for technical excellence through strong design reviews, operational readiness, and blameless post-incident reviews.
- Mentor senior engineers, developing the next generation of storage infrastructure leaders and technical experts.
What we’re looking for:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, a related field or equivalent experience.
- 8+ years of hands-on backend software engineering experience in large-scale distributed systems.
- Experience building and/or managing core infrastructure systems at scale, preferably in online structured data storage, distributed databases, or large-scale data platforms.
- Hands-on experience building and operating highly available, reliable, production-grade systems at scale, including incident response, capacity planning, schema/architecture evolution, and performance tuning.
- Strong understanding of at least one of:
- Distributed SQL or NoSQL databases and their internals (e.g., sharding, replication, consensus, transaction processing), or
- Large-scale graph or relationship-oriented data stores and query patterns.
- Experience working with or migrating to modern distributed storage/database technologies (experience with systems like TiDB or similar is a strong plus).
- Demonstrated technical leadership in setting roadmap and driving execution — including defining technical direction, leading engineering alignment, and partnering across teams to deliver complex platform investments.
- Strong problem-solving skills and analytical mindset, with the ability to use data to guide decisions.
- Experience coding in one of the following languages: Java, Python and/or C/C++.
- Demonstrated experience leveraging AI to accelerate development, enhance operations, and improve customer support.
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 1-2 times/month and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.
#LI-REMOTE
#LI-AH2
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
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, a related field, or equivalent experience
- 8+ years of hands-on backend software engineering experience in large-scale distributed systems
- Experience building or managing core infrastructure systems at scale
- Experience with online structured data storage, distributed databases, or large-scale data platforms
- Experience building and operating highly available, reliable, production-grade systems at scale
- Experience with incident response, capacity planning, schema or architecture evolution, and performance tuning
- Strong understanding of distributed SQL or NoSQL databases and their internals, or large-scale graph and relationship-oriented data stores
- Experience working with or migrating to modern distributed storage or database technologies
- Experience with TiDB or similar technologies
- Demonstrated technical leadership in setting roadmaps, defining technical direction, aligning engineering teams, and driving complex platform investments
- Strong problem-solving skills and analytical mindset
- Experience coding in Java, Python, or C/C++
- Demonstrated experience leveraging AI to accelerate development, enhance operations, and improve customer support
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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