Key skills
PythonJavaC++CGoAIGraphQLCachingPrototypingCommunicationCollaboration
About this role
Pinterest is a platform that inspires creativity and helps users plan memorable experiences. They are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to build robust frameworks and features, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and leverage AI to enhance product development and developer experience.
Responsibilities:
- Build out the backend for Pinner-facing features to power the future of inspiration on Pinterest
- Partner with design, product, and backend teams to build end-to-end functionality
- Put on your Pinner hat to suggest new product ideas and features
- Employ automated testing to build features with a high degree of technical quality, taking responsibility for the components and features you develop
- Grow as an engineer by working with world-class peers on varied and high impact projects
- Design, develop, and operate large scale, distributed systems and networks
- Work with Engineering customers to understand new requirements and address them in a scalable and efficient manner
- Actively work to improve the developer process and experience in all phases from coding to operation
- May contribute to and lead each step of the product development process, from ideation to implementation to release; from rapidly prototyping, running A/B tests, to architecting and building solutions that can scale to support millions of users
- Leverage AI to seek faster execution (i.e. draft, prototype, outline) and explore alternative options (i.e. iterate, compare approaches)
- Leverage AI to synthesize information (summarize, distill themes) and automate repeatable tasks (documentation, reporting, QA checks)
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field or equivalent experience
- 4+ years of industry backend development experience, building consumer or business facing products
- Proficiency in common backend tech stacks for online service, storage, caching and data processing
- Proficiency in building GraphQL APIs and converting REST to GraphQL
- Passionate about working on a Platform team; experience owning large projects
- Self-motivated and a desire to improve the lives of other developers / internal developer productivity
- Experience in following best practices in writing reliable and maintainable code that may be used by many other engineers
- Ability to keep up-to-date with new technologies to understand what should be incorporated
- Strong collaboration and communication skills
- Experience building & operating large scale distributed systems and/or networks. Bonus points if you enjoy deploying and operating large scale workloads on a public cloud footprint
- Experience in Python, Java, C++, or Go or another language and a willingness to learn
- Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve speed and quality in your day-to-day workflow for relevant outputs
- Strong track record of critical evaluation and verification of AI-assisted work (e.g., testing, source-checking, data validation, peer review)
- High integrity and ownership: you protect sensitive data, avoid over-reliance on AI, and remain accountable for final decisions and deliverables