Staff Software Engineer, Conversion Data Privacy at Pinterest

**Who this is for** A senior-level Software Engineer or Architect specialized in privacy engineering, data protection, and building scalable infrastructure to h

Work type: remote

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

Salary: $177,185 – $364,795/yr

Type: Full-time

Summary

**Who this is for** A senior-level Software Engineer or Architect specialized in privacy engineering, data protection, and building scalable infrastructure to handle sensitive conversion data safely and compliantly. **Key highlights** This role involves owning the end-to-end design of privacy-preserving systems and de-identification pipelines, ensuring that the company's advertising monetization efforts remain compliant with evolving global regulations. **You might be a good fit if you...** - Have deep experience designing and operating distributed systems for data privacy, access control, and policy enforcement. - Can translate legal and regulatory requirements into performant technical infrastructure. - Have a strong track record of building reliable, monitored, and auditable data pipelines. - Enjoy cross-functional collaboration with Legal, Data Science, and Product teams to balance data utility with privacy standards.

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/).

Team & Mission

The Privacy & Conversion Data team is responsible for how the company safely and compliantly uses conversion data to power monetization. We build and operate the core privacy infrastructure behind ads reporting and optimization, including controlled data environments, fine‑grained access controls, centralized privacy rules enforcement, and de‑identification pipelines for conversion data. Our mission is to make conversion data privacy‑preserving by default—centralized, de‑identified, auditable, and easy for teams to use, while maintaining high utility for advertisers and staying ahead of an evolving global regulatory landscape.

Role Summary

We’re seeking a Staff Engineer to lead the architecture and technical direction for the conversion data privacy platform, spanning both core Conversion Data systems and de‑identification for ads reporting. You’ll own the end‑to‑end design and evolution of privacy‑critical pipelines and services, partner closely with Product, Data Science, Legal, and infrastructure teams, and set the technical bar for how we use conversion data safely at scale.

What you’ll do:

• Lead the technical strategy and architecture for conversion data privacy across access controls, de‑identification, deletion, and privacy rules enforcement, driving toward a centralized, de‑identified‑by‑default, automated privacy platform for monetization.

• Design and evolve core privacy infrastructure including controlled environments for sensitive data, fine‑grained authorization and policy enforcement, and a central policy repository that consistently governs access across major data platforms and query engines.

• Own de‑identification pipelines for ads reporting end‑to‑end—from separating sensitive and non‑sensitive data, applying de‑identification techniques and transformations, and generating privacy‑preserving datasets, to validating data utility and feeding reporting and analytics surfaces.

• Build and improve privacy frameworks and tooling (for both online and offline workflows) that make safe, compliant conversion data usage simple and self‑service for downstream teams, reducing onboarding friction for new datasets, restrictions, and use cases.

• Drive operational excellence and compliance by defining SLAs, building robust monitoring and alerting (e.g., de‑identification quality, opt‑out metrics, data leakages), leading incident response, and developing performant deletion and leakage‑handling workflows that meet regulatory and audit requirements.

• Partner cross‑functionally with ads, data, product, legal, and infrastructure stakeholders to translate legal/privacy requirements into technical designs, make clear trade‑offs between privacy and utility, and drive alignment on roadmaps, launches, and policy changes that impact advertisers and users.

• Mentor and uplevel engineers across multiple teams, lead critical design and code reviews in privacy‑sensitive areas, and establish best practices and documentation for privacy‑by‑design, de‑identification, and large‑scale data systems.

• BS+ in Computer Science (or related field) or equivalent practical experience.

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a focus on large‑scale data systems or distributed systems.

• Strong proficiency building and operating data pipelines and services using Java/Scala/Kotlin or Python, plus SQL; experience with modern big data ecosystems is a plus.

• Experience designing secure, reliable systems and APIs, with solid grounding in data modeling, access control, and performance optimization.

• Meaningful experience in at least one of: privacy‑preserving data systems (e.g., de‑identification, k‑anonymity), ads measurement/attribution, or large‑scale analytics/experimentation platforms.

• Proven ability to drive cross‑team technical initiatives from design through rollout, working closely with product, data science, and non‑engineering partners (e.g., Legal, Compliance).

• Strong communication and leadership skills, with a track record of mentoring engineers, raising engineering standards, and making sound decisions in ambiguous, high‑impact problem spaces.

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

#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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