Senior Staff Software Engineer, Configuration & Coordination

Pinterest; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 208,592 - 429,454; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead their Service Configuration & Coordination team. You will own the technical strategy for configuration and coordination infrastructure, working closely with multiple engineering teams to deliver robust solutions. The ideal candidate has over a decade of experience in high-scale infrastructure and advanced understanding of distributed systems.

This role requires occasional in-office collaboration and is based in the United States, with a salary ranging from $208,592 to $429,454, reflecting experience and location.

Qualifications

• Mastery in high-scale infrastructure and distributed environments.
• Experience orchestrating technical strategies for control-plane systems.
• Advanced proficiency in distributed coordination and substrate design.
• Ability to align configuration surfaces with deployment pipelines.
• History of elevating senior engineering talent.

Responsibilities

• Orchestrate the long-term vision for configuration ecosystems.
• Spearhead migration to modern platforms.
• Architect next-generation control plane interfaces.
• Direct integration of coordination stacks.
• Leverage AI to enhance infrastructure design.

Skills

High-scale infrastructure expertise

Cross-functional technical strategies

Distributed coordination proficiency

CI/CD and orchestration frameworks

AI-enabled workflows

Education

Bachelor's/Master's in Computer Science

Job description

Intro

Pinterest's Service Configuration & Coordination team builds the platforms, APIs, and tooling that make dynamic configuration and service coordination safe, scalable, and reliable for every service across regions and clouds, serving as the central hub for cross-functional alignment and system orchestration. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer (IC17), you'll own the end-to-end technical strategy and long-term vision for our configuration and coordination infrastructure. You'll define the future of these mission-critical systems, partnering closely with Traffic, Compute, Observability, and Cloud Architecture teams to deliver robust, high-performance solutions at scale.

What you'll do:

• Orchestrate the long-term technical vision for configuration ecosystems to ensure feature flags, ML settings, and experiments utilize unified paved paths. You will champion operational safety through standardized validation, staged rollout mechanisms, and robust governance frameworks across the organization.
• Spearhead the transition from legacy substrates by migrating mission-critical use cases to modern platforms. You will establish scalable onboarding patterns that enable engineering teams to evolve their configuration lifecycle with precision and minimal friction.
• Architect the next generation of control plane interfaces and diagnostic surfaces. By engineering high-performance, read-optimized APIs, you will empower human operators and automated assistants to seamlessly manage and reason about complex production states.
• Direct the integration of coordination stacks within the broader deployment and multi-region landscape. Your leadership will refine service discovery and substrate architecture to accelerate regional expansion while eliminating bespoke toil and architectural circularity.
• Leverage AI to catalyze infrastructure design and analytical phases, utilizing assistant-enabled workflows to synthesize partner requirements into executable roadmaps. You will maintain absolute accountability through rigorous data validation, metric-driven reviews, and comprehensive peer verification.

What we're looking for:

• Decade-plus mastery in high-scale infrastructure and distributed environments, with a track record of architecting or managing business-critical backend substrates in production settings.
• Proven expertise in orchestrating cross-functional technical strategies for control-plane systems (e.g., experiments, feature flags, or ML config), unifying disparate teams around standardized and safe rollout methodologies.
• Advanced proficiency in distributed coordination and substrate design–capable of navigating complex consistency models, failure domains, and the engineering of resilient, high-leverage abstractions.
• Experience aligning configuration surfaces with deployment pipelines and orchestration frameworks (e.g., IaC or CI/CD), with a focus on mitigating architectural circularity and reducing service owner toil.
• History of elevating senior engineering talent while steering parallel workstreams, synthesizing loosely coupled initiatives into a unified technical vision and executable roadmap.
• Ability to catalyze execution via AI-enabled workflows (e.g., design synthesis, analytical phases, or documentation) while ensuring rigorous accountability through data validation, peer review, and metric-driven verification.
• Extreme ownership and professional integrity: dedicated to safeguarding data, maintaining human-in-the-loop oversight for automated outputs, and taking full responsibility for long-term architectural outcomes.
• Bachelor's/Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or 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 every 6 months and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.

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 complete this form for support.

Base salary range: $208,592 — $429,454 USD for US-based applicants only. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise.