Staff Software Engineer, Activation Team at Pinterest

**Who this is for** An experienced backend engineer looking to drive technical strategy for user acquisition and retention systems at scale. **Key highlights**

Work type: remote

Location: San Francisco, CA, US; Remote, US

Salary: $177,185 – $364,795/yr

Type: Full-time

Summary

**Who this is for** An experienced backend engineer looking to drive technical strategy for user acquisition and retention systems at scale. **Key highlights** You will lead the backend roadmap for Pinterest’s activation team, building critical infrastructure that powers new and returning user experiences while collaborating closely with ML teams to support recommendation workloads. **You might be a good fit if you...** - Have 5+ years of experience in backend development for consumer-facing internet platforms. - Possess expertise in designing distributed systems and event-driven architectures. - Have a demonstrated history of leading cross-team technical projects with measurable business impact. - Are comfortable partnering with product and data science teams to prioritize high-value technical initiatives.

Job Description

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/).

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

• 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

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our [PinFlex](https://www.pinterestcareers.com/pinflex/) page to learn more about our working model.

• 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.

#LI-KK6

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

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