Key skills
Backend systems developmentAPIsEvent-driven architecturesDistributed systemsService-oriented architectureMachine learning infrastructureSystem reliabilityOperational healthTechnical roadmap developmentMentoring engineersProduct mindsetAIMLMentoringCommunicationCollaboration
About this role
Pinterest is a platform where millions find creative ideas and plan for memories. As a Staff Engineer on the Activation team, you'll drive the technical strategy for backend systems that enhance user experiences and collaborate with various teams to identify and solve technical problems.
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