Principal Engineer - AI-Driven Shopping & Delivery Infra

Pinterest; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 285,452 - 449,541; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest in Seattle is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the technical strategy and execution for our Indexing & Retrieval Infrastructure across Core, Ads, and Shopping. You will define long-term vision and drive cross-org modernization to support real-time and incremental retrieval at scale.

Collaborate with engineering, product, ML, and infrastructure leaders to align priorities, raise the technical bar, and deliver shared platform capabilities that improve freshness, quality, and cost

Qualifications

• Experience building and evolving large-scale indexing, search, or retrieval systems.
• Proven ability to lead multi-team or cross-org initiatives.
• Track record of modernization efforts and platform convergence.
• Strong systems thinking with impact on product quality and ML needs.
• Excellent communication for technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term technical vision for indexing and retrieval across Core, Ads, and Shopping.
• Lead cross-org initiatives to modernize architecture for real-time and incremental retrieval at scale.
• Partner with engineering, product, ML, and infra leaders to align priorities.
• Guide system design, architecture reviews, and changes spanning ingestion, indexing, and retrieval.
• Build shared capabilities like metrics, tuning surfaces, and debugging workflows.
• Mentor senior engineers and foster high standards for operational excellence.
• Leverage AI to accelerate analysis, prototyping and design iteration.

Skills

Large-scale indexing

Real-time retrieval

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

AI in engineering

System design

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering or related field

Job description

Pinterest in Seattle is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the technical strategy and execution for our Indexing & Retrieval Infrastructure across Core, Ads, and Shopping. You will define long-term vision and drive cross-org modernization to support real-time and incremental retrieval at scale.

Collaborate with engineering, product, ML, and infrastructure leaders to align priorities, raise the technical bar, and deliver shared platform capabilities that improve freshness, quality, and cost