Staff Software Engineer, Growth AI

at Pinterest

Los Angeles, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Seattle, United States

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.

Pinterest's Growth org reaches hundreds of millions of users by helping them discover Pinterest from across the web — through search engines, generative engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews), and other emerging surfaces. We're hiring a Staff Software Engineer to be the product engineering anchor across two closely partnered teams: our SEO Product team, which owns Pinterest's durable organic discovery channels, and a new exploratory team focused on AI-first growth products.

This is a hands-on technical role for a strong product engineer who wants to architect and ship AI-powered growth experiences at scale, partnering closely with ML teams to take capabilities from prototype to production. You'll set the technical bar through your own code and architecture — not by stepping into management.

What you'll do:

Architect and build the production systems that AI/ML capabilities ship through across two Growth teams: APIs, data pipelines, content systems, evaluation and monitoring infrastructure.
Partner with Pinterest's centralized ML org and applied research teams to productize AI/ML capabilities at scale — defining service interfaces, building eval pipelines, and managing latency, cost, and quality tradeoffs.
Design and build the cross-team technical foundations that serve both teams: AI evaluation systems, content quality pipelines, agent skill platform, knowledge brain.
Set the technical bar across two teams operating an AI-native engineering model: AI in every part of the SDLC, eval-driven shipping, prototype-first culture.
Mentor engineers across both teams as a peer Staff IC, deepening their technical work without managing them.

What we're looking for:

8+ years of product / systems engineering experience, with a strong track record shipping production systems at scale that touch real users.
Cross-team technical leadership: you've been the architectural anchor on multi-team initiatives, set direction others build on, and mentored through code.
Working knowledge of common ML/AI techniques (supervised learning, embeddings, ranking, LLMs, evaluation methodology) — enough to scope ML projects, reason about ML system design, and collaborate effectively with MLEs.
Strong track record partnering with ML/research teams to ship AI-powered features in production.
Demonstrated AI-augmented engineering practice — fluent use of Cursor / Claude Code / agentic tools, with a clear approach to validating AI-generated work.
Upsell, influence the scope of the team (e.g. cross team collaboration on potential signal sharing and other opportunities )
Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
Nice to have
- Direct hands-on experience shipping applied ML, LLM/VLM, or agentic systems in production
- Domain experience in search, discovery, recommendations, ranking, growth, or SEO
- Experience as the product-engineering counterpart on an AI-first product launch from prototype to scale

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 1x per quarter and therefore needs to be in a commutable distance from one of the following offices Palo Alto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Seattle.

#LI-CL5

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

$208,454—$364,795 USD

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.