Senior Staff Backend Architect – AI-Powered Platform

Pinterest; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 209,000 - 429,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Sr. Staff Backend Engineer for the Pinterest Assistant team. You will define architecture for a multimodal, AI-powered backend powering Pinners' search, discovery and shopping experiences.

Lead the platform you design, mentor engineers, and collaborate with product, ML and infrastructure teams to scale products used by millions of users in a fast-paced environment. This role requires strategic thinking and hands-on implementation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent
• 10+ years of backend software engineering experience
• 3+ years as a technical lead driving large-scale backend systems
• Strong backend experience in Python, TypeScript, Node
• Experience building platforms or foundational infrastructure
• Strong understanding of model-driven systems and collaboration with ML engineers
• Leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration
• Familiarity with retrieval, ranking, personalization, or orchestration
• Mentoring senior engineers and elevating engineering quality
• Product-minded and execution-oriented, with ability to handle ambiguity

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision and architecture for Pinterest Assistant backend
• Lead design and implementation of the core Assistant platform components
• Drive platform investments to improve velocity, reliability, and scalability
• Partner with Product, Design, Frontend, ML, and Infrastructure teams
• Shape architecture for AI-powered apps including memory and orchestration
• Establish best practices for production LLM and agent systems
• Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar through reviews
• Navigate ambiguity with pragmatic architectural decisions
• Influence broader AI platform strategy across Pinterest
• Stay current with advances in LLMs and backend design

Skills

Backend engineering

Python

TypeScript/Node

Distributed systems

Leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent

Tools

APIs

ML tooling

Job description

Pinterest is seeking a Sr. Staff Backend Engineer for the Pinterest Assistant team. You will define architecture for a multimodal, AI-powered backend powering Pinners' search, discovery and shopping experiences.

Lead the platform you design, mentor engineers, and collaborate with product, ML and infrastructure teams to scale products used by millions of users in a fast-paced environment. This role requires strategic thinking and hands-on implementation.