Principal Software Engineer, ML & Media Infra

Pinterest, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 285,000 - 450,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a leader for ML infrastructure to set strategy for model training and serving, with emphasis on GPU efficiency and large-scale ranking systems. You will guide architectures, ensure reliability, and collaborate across Ads, Core AI/ML, and GenAI teams to scale features responsibly.

The role requires strong systems programming skills (C++, Python, or Java) and a track record delivering company-wide infrastructure initiatives in ambiguous environments.

Qualifications

• Experience building distributed ML systems and production ML workloads.
• Strong GPU performance knowledge including profiling, kernels, and memory optimization.
• Proficient in C++, Python or Java with solid system design skills.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical vision and roadmap for model training and serving across data and feature infrastructure.
• Lead architectures for distributed training, fine-tuning, distillation, evaluation, and high-scale inference.
• Lead architectures for content acquisition, media ingestion and signal processing.
• Improve efficiency across data loading, distributed execution, GPU kernels, memory, and scheduling.
• Build reliable, observable platforms with strong quality guarantees and training/serving consistency.
• Partner with Ads and Core AI/ML teams to productionize features and models at Pinterest scale.
• Drive cross-organizational architecture decisions, migrations, and operational standards; mentor senior engineers.
• Partner with Content, Shopping catalog and GenAI teams to improve Pinterest content ecosystem.
• Use AI-assisted development and analysis to accelerate prototyping, performance diagnosis, and validation.

Skills

C++

Python

Java

Distributed ML systems

GPU optimization

System design

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

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 theflexibility 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.

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.

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.

The ML & Media Infrastructure team enables fast, safe, and efficient delivery of AI/ML solutions across Ads and Core critical products. We build unified data, training, feature, and inference infrastructure; this role will set technical direction across model training and serving, with a focus on GPU efficiency and large-scale ranking systems.

The ML & Media Infrastructure team also owns the critical platforms for content acquisition, media ingestion and media signal processing. The team closely collaborates with multiple partner teams bringing the most inspiration content to Pinterest to enhance the content foundation of all products, adopting LLM/VLM in a near real-time system to understand content and build fundamental signals for LLM innovations, and standing in the frontier to meet GenAI compliance requirements.

What you'll do

• Set the technical vision and roadmap for model training and serving, with reusable interfaces to data and feature infrastructure.
• Lead architectures for distributed training, fine-tuning, distillation, evaluation, and high-scale CPU/GPU inference.
• Lead architectures for content acquisition, media ingestion and signal processing.
• Improve efficiency across data loading, distributed execution, GPU kernels and memory, compilation, quantization, scheduling, and capacity.
• Build reliable, observable platforms with strong quality guarantees and training/serving consistency.
• Partner with Ads and Core AI/ML teams to productionize features and models safely at Pinterest scale.
• Drive cross-organizational architecture decisions, migrations, and operational standards; mentor senior engineers and raise the engineering bar.
• Partner closely with Content, Shopping catalog and GenAI teams to improve Pinterest content ecosystem.
• Use AI-assisted development and analysis to accelerate prototyping, performance diagnosis, and validation while maintaining rigorous correctness and data safeguards.

What we're looking for

• A track record of setting technical strategy and delivering company-wide infrastructure initiatives in ambiguous environments.
• Deep expertise in distributed ML systems, including production experience with both large-scale training and online inference.
• Strong GPU performance knowledge, such as profiling, distributed execution, kernel and memory optimization, compilation, or quantization.
• Experience with AI/ML modeling, recommender systems, Ads ranking, retrieval, feature platforms, or similarly demanding ML workloads.
• Experience with content acquisition e.g. crawler, content understanding, NRT data processing.
• Experience with search and recommendation system, ads serving system.
• Strong systems programming and design skills in C++, Java, or Python.
• High ownership and sound judgement in reliability, security, cost, and operational excellence.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve speed and critically evaluate AI-assisted work, with accountability for correctness, quality, and sensitive data.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related field, or equivalent experience.

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 1-2 times per quarter and therefore needs to be within a commutable distance of our Palo Alto, CA or San Francisco, CA office.

Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.

US based applicants only

$285,452 — $449,541 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 completethis form for support.