Staff Software Engineer, Ads & Core Serving Platform
Primary stack
Job description
About the Position
Staff Software Engineer, Ads & Core Serving Platform
Palo Alto, CA, US; San Francisco, CA, US
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.
Responsibilities
- Set technical direction and lead architecture for major serving-platform initiatives across Ads and Core.
- Build and operate scalable, highly available systems with clear performance, reliability, and efficiency goals.
- Partner with product, ML, infrastructure, and Core/Ads engineering teams to translate complex requirements into reusable platform capabilities.
- Improve the serving stack through framework modernization, API evolution, experimentation controls, observability, and debugging tools.
- Lead complex projects end to end: technical strategy, design, implementation, rollout, adoption, and operational readiness.
- Use AI to accelerate analysis, debugging, design exploration, and iteration while applying sound engineering judgment and validation.
- Raise the quality bar through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, and operational excellence.
- Mentor engineers and scale technical leadership across the organization.
Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience building and operating production backend or distributed systems.
- Experience leading complex technical initiatives across teams or organizations.
- Strong expertise in distributed systems, online serving, low-latency services, or infrastructure platforms.
- Demonstrated ability to make sound tradeoffs across latency, reliability, scalability, cost, and developer experience.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills with technical and cross-functional partners.
- Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Java, C++, Go, or Python.
- Experience mentoring engineers and elevating technical standards.
- Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve the speed and quality of day-to-day engineering workflows, with a rigorous approach to testing, validation, and responsible use.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
Nice to Have
- Experience with ads delivery, recommendation or search serving, retrieval, ranking, or experimentation systems.
- Experience with serving-framework migrations, platform consolidation, or developer tooling.
- Experience with observability, production debugging, traffic management, or incident response.
We Offer
- Competitive salary range: $208,454-$364,795 USD
- Equity
- Relocation assistance: Not eligible
- Hybrid work model: In-office collaboration 1-2 times per week
About the Company
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.
US based applicants only
Our Commitment to Inclusion
Pinterest is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit. We want to have the best qualified people in every job. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, status as a protected veteran, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member) or any other consideration made unlawful by applicable federal, state or local laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you require a medical or religious accommodation during the job application process, please complete this form for support.
By submitting this application, I certify that all information submitted in my application and throughout the hiring process is true, accurate, and complete to the best of my knowledge. I understand that any false statement, omission, or misrepresentation may disqualify me from employment consideration or result in termination if discovered after hire.
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