Staff Software Engineer, Activation Team

Pinterest is a platform that inspires creativity and helps users plan memorable experiences. The Staff Engineer on the Activation team will lead the technical strategy for backend systems, focusing on enhancing user experiences for new and returning users through collaboration with ML engineers and product managers.

Responsibilities:

• 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

Requirements:

• 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