**Who this is for** This position is for an elite Principal Engineer with a passion for developer productivity and a desire to build the future of AI-assisted s
Work type: remote
Location: Chicago, IL, US; Remote, US
Salary: $242,634 – $499,541/yr
Type: Full-time
**Who this is for** This position is for an elite Principal Engineer with a passion for developer productivity and a desire to build the future of AI-assisted software engineering. **Key highlights** You will operate as a high-level architect within an internal "startup" team, building the foundational platform that enables AI agents to automate coding, debugging, and deployment workflows for thousands of engineers. **You might be a good fit if you...** - Have deep experience architecting complex, large-scale distributed systems and production-grade software. - Are capable of building advanced AI agent runtimes, memory systems, and evaluation pipelines. - Thrive in ambiguous, high-impact environments where you can set technical strategy without a direct reporting team. - Enjoy hands-on coding and technical mentorship at the principal level.
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](https://www.pinterestcareers.com/our-life/pinflex/) 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](https://www.pinterestcareers.com/our-philosophy-on-ai-in-hiring/).
Pinterest is at one of those rare inflection points that comes along once in a generation. The way software gets built is changing fundamentally — AI agents are beginning to write code, review pull requests, debug production incidents, and orchestrate entire features. Pinterest is not watching this transformation from the sideline. We are choosing to lead it.
We are looking for a Principal Engineer to serve as a technical force multiplier for our Engineering Acceleration organization — a team of 60–80 engineers whose mission is to 10x how fast, and how well, every engineer at Pinterest builds. This is a startup-within-a-company opportunity: the charter is ambitious, the problems are largely unsolved, and the systems you build will define how an entire engineering organization operates for years.
As Principal Engineer for Agentic Engineering, you will architect and ship the foundational platform and capabilities that enables AI agents to operate as integrated participants in Pinterest's software development lifecycle. You will design the agent runtimes, memory systems, orchestration frameworks, evaluation pipelines, and governance models that make it possible for 3,000+ engineers to build alongside AI agents — safely, measurably, and at scale.
This is not a strategy-only or governance-only role. Architecture authority here is earned through production systems, measurable impact, and technical depth. You will write code. You will build reference implementations. You will take the hardest, most ambiguous problems and move them from concepts to operational systems — and in doing so, set the standard for how Engineering Acceleration builds.
You will work without a direct reporting team but with broad organizational authority. The Senior Director of Engineering Acceleration, VP of Engineering, and Chief Architect will look to you as a key technical advisor — a trusted partner and primary delegation point for the hardest technical questions facing this organization. Your instincts will shape hiring bars, investment decisions, and multi-year technical direction.
What you’ll do:
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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
$242,634—$499,541 USD