Sr. Staff Software Engineer, AI Platform

Pinterest; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 258,000 - 429,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer for the AI Platform team to scale Pinterest’s AI/ML evaluation platform for GenAI workloads across the company. You will shape the roadmap, drive modernization, and ensure reliable, high-quality evaluations that inform product decisions.

Collaborating with engineering, research, product, and safety, you will establish evaluation standards, metrics, and governance to deliver trusted AI-powered experiences and robust launch decisions.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of designing and operating evaluation systems for GenAI/ML
• Strong Python programming and distributed systems knowledge
• Experience with GenAI evaluation libraries and frameworks

Responsibilities

• Identify modernization opportunities and scale the roadmap for a company-wide evaluation system
• Define cross-team technical strategy and drive adoption of shared evaluation capabilities
• Make durable architectural decisions to improve user experience and reliability of the evaluation platform
• Establish evaluation methodologies balancing automated metrics and human judgment
• Lead cross-team workstreams and manage risks to deliver impact

Skills

Python

Distributed systems

AI tooling

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering or related field

Tools

AutoEvals

OpenEvals

Ragas

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.

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 the flexibility 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. The AI Platform team delivers essential tools and infrastructure utilized by hundreds of AI and ML engineers across Pinterest, powering crucial functions such as recommendations, ads, visual search, growth/notifications, and trust and safety. Our primary objectives are to ensure AI and ML systems maintain production-grade quality and enable rapid iteration for our customers.

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the AI Platform team, you will shape and scale Pinterest’s AI/ML evaluation platform into a unified, reliable system adopted company-wide. You will identify modernization opportunities, elevate the roadmap, and execute technical strategy of a durable evaluation system for GenAI and ML workloads at Pinterest, partnering across engineering, research, product, and safety to improve quality, launch decisions, and trust in AI-powered experiences.

What You’ll Do

• Identify modernization opportunities and scale the roadmap for a company-wide evaluation system in partnership with technical leadership
• Define cross-team technical strategy, align partner teams, and drive broad adoption of shared evaluation capabilities
• Make durable architectural decisions that improve the user experience and reliability of Pinterest’s AI/ML evaluation platform
• Establish evaluation methodologies and standards that balance automated metrics, expert judgment, human feedback, safety, and business outcomes
• Lead complex cross-team workstreams, resolve technical tradeoffs and risks, and deliver impact

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years of deep, hands-on experience designing and operating evaluation systems for GenAI and complex ML systems, including benchmark design, golden datasets, automated metrics, human evaluation, model-based grading, and failure analysis
• Strong programming skills in Python coupled with a solid grasp of distributed systems principles, and comfortable iterating with AI tools on coding and design
• Deep familiarity with GenAI and RecSys evaluation libraries and frameworks, AutoEvals, OpenEvals, Ragas, etc
• 5+ years of experience building scalable platforms for distributed experimentation, data and model versioning, orchestration, observability, release management, and production monitoring
• Strong judgment around GenAI risks, including robustness, bias, privacy, security, and the limitations of automated evaluation signals
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience

In-Office Requirement Statement

• We let the type of work you do guide the collaboration style. That means we're not always working in an office, but we continue to gather for key moments of collaboration and connection.
• This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times/quarter and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.

Relocation Statement:

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

US based applicants only

$208,592-$429,454 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 or 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.

By submitting this application, I certify that all information submitted in my application and throughout the hiring process is true, accurate, and complete to the best of my knowledge. I understand that any false statement, omission, or misrepresentation may disqualify me from employment consideration or result in termination if discovered after hire.