Staff Motion Designer

Pinterest; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 159,000 - 327,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest, Inc. is seeking a Staff Motion Designer for the Design Innovation team in Los Angeles. The role focuses on defining Pinterest’s motion language, collaborating with product and engineering to ship accessible, scalable motion experiences.

You will lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences, translate explorations into scalable systems, and prototype ideas using various media to accelerate decisions.

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of experience in motion design, product design, interaction design, or a closely related discipline.
• Staff or principal level influence across teams, shaping product or design-system direction.
• Deep command of motion and interaction design principles, including timing, choreography, easing, and transitions.
• Experience creating scalable motion systems, with principles, tokens, and pattern libraries.
• Proven experience partnering with engineers to implement complex motion and assess performance.
• Design technologist mindset with prototyping tools, AI, and code-based workflows.
• Strong product and systems thinking, connecting craft to user needs and impact.
• Excellent communication and storytelling, with ability to align cross-functional partners.
• Collaborative, low-ego style and commitment to inclusive design.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve motion design language and guidelines across surfaces and features.
• Lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences.
• Collaborate with product designers, engineers, PMs, researchers, and content designers.
• Translate explorations into scalable design system contributions.
• Prototype and validate motion ideas using tools, code, AI-enabled tools, or prototypes.
• Work with engineering to address animation challenges, balancing performance and accessibility.
• Create tools, templates, and workflows to accelerate motion concepts and implementation.
• Stay current with AI-enabled motion tools to strengthen ideation and production.

Skills

Motion design

Interaction design

Design systems

Prototyping

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in design/related field

Job description

Pinterest is hiring a Staff Motion Designer for the Design Innovation team. This hands‑on role focuses on defining and evolving Pinterest’s motion design language across surfaces and flagship features, with close collaboration across product and engineering to ship accessible, scalable motion experiences.

What You’ll Do

• Define and evolve Pinterest’s motion design language, including principles, interaction and transition patterns, timing and tokens, specifications, and guidance, so motion remains intentional, coherent, accessible, and reusable across the product ecosystem.
• Lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences, using motion to clarify state, cause and effect, hierarchy, feedback, progress, and system responsiveness.
• Collaborate horizontally with product designers, engineers, product managers, researchers, and content designers to connect feature-level work to a shared motion strategy and improve the quality of shipped experiences.
• Translate high‑craft explorations into scalable design system contributions that reduce ad hoc implementations, improve consistency, and help teams move faster with confidence.
• Rapidly prototype and validate motion ideas using the appropriate medium, including motion studies, design tools, code, AI-enabled tools, or custom prototypes, to build shared understanding and accelerate decisions.
• Work closely with engineering during implementation to address technically ambitious animation challenges while balancing performance, platform conventions, accessibility, and maintainability.
• Create or enable lightweight tools, templates, and workflows that help designers explore visual and motion concepts quickly and help engineering teams build sophisticated animations reliably.
• Stay current with AI-enabled motion and visual‑creation tools, applying them strategically to strengthen ideation, prototyping, and production while maintaining critical thinking, quality validation, and ownership of outcomes.
• Conduct motion quality reviews, provide actionable feedback on designs and implementations, and mentor designers on motion principles, systems thinking, prototype craft, and productive engineering partnerships.
• Explain the rationale, tradeoffs, and user impact behind motion decisions to teams, leaders, and executives, building alignment around a high bar for motion craft and system quality.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of experience in motion design, product design, interaction design, or a closely related discipline, with a portfolio demonstrating exceptional motion craft in shipped digital products or platforms.
• A staff or principal‑level record of influencing horizontally across teams, shaping product or design‑system direction, and raising quality without relying on formal authority.
• Deep command of motion and interaction design principles, including timing, choreography, easing, spring behavior, feedback, and transitions, with strong judgment about when motion improves usability, comprehension, emotion, and trust.
• Experience creating or materially evolving scalable motion systems, such as principles, token sets, pattern libraries, documentation, tooling, and governance that teams can adopt across products and platforms.
• Proven experience partnering with engineers to implement complex motion, including fluency in performance, technical constraints, platform conventions, handoff, and quality assurance.
• A design technologist mindset, comfortable using prototyping tools, AI, and code or technical workflows when useful to explore ideas, communicate intent, and improve how teams design and build.
• Strong product and systems thinking, connecting craft decisions to user needs, product strategy, accessibility, implementation efficiency, and measurable impact.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to synthesize ambiguity, create clear documentation, facilitate constructive critique, and align cross‑functional partners.
• A collaborative, low‑ego working style with a passion for learning, experimentation, mentoring, and inclusive design, including consideration of reduced‑motion preferences, cognitive load, and diverse user needs from the beginning of the design process.
• Bachelor’s degree in design, animation, human‑computer interaction, a related field, or equivalent experience.

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience defining motion for AI, conversational, multimodal, or other emerging product experiences.
• Experience contributing to platform‑wide design systems, public motion systems, or open‑source animation libraries.
• Experience building designer‑facing or engineer‑facing tools that improve motion prototyping, handoff, or implementation quality.
• Experience in large‑scale consumer products, personalization, or rapid experimentation environments.

Location and Work Model

This role is based in Los Angeles, CA (onsite). The position requires being in the office for in‑person collaboration 1‑2 times every 6 months, and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.

Compensation

The salary range for this position is USD 158,765 - 326,870 per year.

Relocation

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