Staff Motion Designer

Pinterest; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 159,000 - 327,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Motion Designer to define and evolve the company’s motion design language on the Design Innovation team. This hands-on role works across product and engineering to scale motion systems, prototype concepts, and elevate the quality of shipped experiences across surfaces and flagship features.

The Staff Motion Designer will shape a coherent motion foundation, guide interaction patterns, and support AI-forward experiences by clarifying state, hierarchy, and feedback

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in motion design or related fields with a strong portfolio.
• Staff or principal-level track record across teams influencing direction.
• Strong command of motion principles, timing, and transitions.
• Experience evolving scalable motion systems across products and platforms.
• Proven collaboration with engineers for complex motion and QA.
• Design technologist mindset using prototyping tools, AI, and code.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve Pinterest’s motion design language, including principles and patterns.
• Lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences to improve clarity and responsiveness.
• Partner across design, engineering, PM, research, and content to align motion strategy.
• Translate high-craft motion into scalable contributions for design systems.
• Prototype and validate motion ideas using various mediums to accelerate decisions.
• Collaborate with engineering to address animation challenges while balancing performance and accessibility.
• Develop tools, templates, and workflows to aid designers and engineers in motion work.
• Stay current with AI-enabled motion tools and apply them to ideation and production.
• Conduct motion reviews, provide feedback, and mentor designers on motion principles.
• Communicate rationale and tradeoffs of motion decisions to stakeholders.

Skills

Motion design

Design systems

Collaboration

Communication

Mentoring

Systems thinking

Inclusive design

Prototyping tools

Education

Bachelor’s degree in design, animation, HCI, or related field

Tools

Prototyping tools

Code

AI tools

Job description

Pinterest is hiring a Staff Motion Designer to help define and evolve the company’s motion design language on the Design Innovation team. This role is hands-on and works closely across product and engineering to scale motion systems, prototype and validate concepts, and improve the quality of shipped experiences across surfaces and flagship features.

Role Summary

The Staff Motion Designer will shape a coherent motion foundation, guiding how interaction and transition patterns behave across Pinterest’s product ecosystem. The position also supports AI-forward experiences by directing motion to clarify state, relationships, hierarchy, feedback, progress, and system responsiveness.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve Pinterest’s motion design language, including principles, interaction and transition patterns, timing and tokens, specifications, and guidance to ensure motion is intentional, coherent, accessible, and reusable.
• Lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences, using motion to improve clarity of state, cause and effect, hierarchy, feedback, progress, and responsiveness.
• Partner across product design, engineering, product management, research, and content design to connect feature-level work to a shared motion strategy and raise shipped experience quality.
• Translate high-craft motion explorations into scalable contributions for design systems, reducing ad-hoc implementation and improving consistency across teams.
• Prototype and validate motion ideas quickly using appropriate mediums, including motion studies, design tools, code, AI-enabled tools, or custom prototypes to accelerate shared understanding and decisions.
• Work with engineering throughout 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 visual and motion ideas quickly and enable engineering teams to build sophisticated animations reliably.
• Stay current with AI-enabled motion and visual-creation tools and apply them strategically to strengthen ideation, prototyping, and production while maintaining critical thinking and quality validation.
• Perform motion quality reviews, provide actionable feedback on designs and implementations, and mentor designers on motion principles, systems thinking, prototype craft, and effective engineering collaboration.
• Communicate the rationale, tradeoffs, and user impact behind motion decisions to teams, leaders, and executives to support alignment on motion craft and system quality.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in motion design, product design, interaction design, or a closely related discipline, supported by a portfolio showing exceptional motion craft in shipped digital products or platforms.
• A staff or principal-level track record of influencing across teams, shaping product or design-system direction, and raising quality without relying on formal authority.
• Strong command of motion and interaction design principles, including timing, choreography, easing, spring behavior, feedback, and transitions, plus judgment on 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 for adoption across products and platforms.
• 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 using prototyping tools, AI, and code or technical workflows when useful to explore ideas and communicate intent.
• Strong product and systems thinking that connects 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 constructive critique, and align cross-functional partners.
• Collaborative, low-ego working style with a focus on learning, experimentation, mentoring, and inclusive design, including consideration of reduced-motion preferences, cognitive load, and diverse user needs.
• Bachelor’s degree in design, animation, human-computer interaction, a related field, or equivalent experience.

Preferred / 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 working on large-scale consumer products, personalization, or rapid experimentation environments.

Technologies

• AI-enabled tools
• AI
• Code

Location and Work Model

• Location: Seattle, WA (onsite)
• In-office requirement: In-person collaboration 1-2 times every 6-months; the role can be situated anywhere in the country.
• Relocation: Not eligible for relocation assistance. Refer to the PinFlex page for details on the working model.

Compensation

• Salary range: USD 158,765 - 326,870 per year