Staff Motion Designer

Pinterest; New York (NY); On-site; USD 159,000 - 327,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is expanding the Design Innovation team to hire a Staff Motion Designer who will define and evolve the motion design language across surfaces and flagship features. This hands-on role blends craft with systems thinking to help teams ship motion that feels intentional, accessible, and scalable.

You will lead motion for flagship and AI-forward experiences, collaborating with product designers, engineers, PMs, researchers, and content designers to connect feature work to a shared motion

Qualifications

• 8+ years in motion design or related field with shipped products.
• Staff/principal-level influence across teams and design-system direction.
• Experience evolving scalable motion systems and governance.
• Collaboration with engineers to implement complex motion and ensure performance.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve Pinterest’s motion design language, including principles and patterns.
• Lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences.
• Collaborate across disciplines to connect feature work to motion strategy and quality.
• Transform high-craft explorations into scalable contributions for a design system.
• Rapidly prototype and validate motion ideas using the right tools and mediums.
• Partner with engineering during implementation to address ambitious animation challenges.
• Develop lightweight tools, templates, and workflows for designers and engineers.
• Stay current with AI-enabled motion and visual-creation tools and apply strategically.
• Run motion quality reviews and mentor designers in motion principles and systems thinking.
• Articulate rationale, tradeoffs, and user impact behind motion decisions.

Skills

Motion design leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Systems thinking

Prototyping

Storytelling

User-centered design

Education

Bachelor’s degree in design or related field

Tools

Figma

After Effects

Prototyping tools

Job description

Pinterest is expanding the Design Innovation team and needs a Staff Motion Designer to define and evolve the motion design language across surfaces and flagship features. This role is hands-on and horizontal, combining craft with systems thinking to help teams ship motion that feels intentional, accessible, and consistent at scale.

What you’ll do

• Define and evolve Pinterest’s motion design language, including principles, interaction and transition patterns, timing and tokens, specifications, and guidance.
• Lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences, using motion to communicate state, cause and effect, hierarchy, feedback, progress, and responsiveness.
• Collaborate across disciplines including product designers, engineers, product managers, researchers, and content designers to connect feature-level work to a shared motion strategy and improve the quality of what ships.
• Transform high-craft explorations into scalable contributions for a design system that reduces ad hoc implementation and speeds teams up with confidence.
• Rapidly prototype and validate motion ideas using the right medium, such as motion studies, design tools, code, AI-enabled tools, or custom prototypes.
• Partner closely with engineering during implementation to address technically ambitious animation challenges while balancing performance, platform conventions, accessibility, and maintainability.
• Develop or enable lightweight tools, templates, and workflows that help designers explore visually and motion-wise and help engineering teams build sophisticated animations reliably.
• Stay current with AI-enabled motion and visual-creation tools, applying them strategically to improve ideation, prototyping, and production while maintaining critical thinking, validation, and ownership of outcomes.
• Run motion quality reviews, provide actionable feedback, and mentor designers in motion principles, systems thinking, prototype craft, and effective engineering collaboration.
• Articulate the rationale, tradeoffs, and user impact behind motion decisions to align teams, leaders, and executives on craft and system quality.

What you bring

• Minimum 8 years of experience in motion design, product design, interaction design, or a closely related discipline, with a portfolio showing exceptional motion craft in shipped digital products or platforms.
• A staff/principal-level track 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, including timing, choreography, easing, spring behavior, feedback, and transitions, plus 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.
• Proven experience partnering with engineers to implement complex motion, with practical fluency in performance, technical constraints, platform conventions, handoff, and quality assurance.
• A design technologist mindset, comfortable with prototyping tools, AI, and code or technical workflows to explore ideas and communicate intent.
• Strong product and systems thinking, connecting craft decisions to user needs, product strategy, accessibility, implementation efficiency, and measurable impact.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, including the ability to synthesize ambiguity, create clear documentation, facilitate critique, and align cross-functional partners.
• A collaborative, low-ego approach with a passion for learning, experimentation, mentoring, and inclusive design, including consideration of reduced-motion preferences, cognitive load, and diverse user needs from the start.
• A Bachelor’s degree in design, animation, human-computer interaction, a related field, or equivalent experience.

Bonus points

• 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

• New York, NY (onsite)
• In-office collaboration 1-2 times every 6-months; the role can be situated anywhere in the country.

Compensation

USD 158,765 - 326,870 per year

Relocation

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