Staff Motion Designer, Design Innovation

Pinterest; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 159,000 - 327,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Motion Designer to define and evolve a comprehensive motion language across products and AI-forward experiences. You will lead motion strategy, partner with product and engineering, and build scalable design system contributions to improve consistency and velocity.

You will prototype using design tools, code, and AI-enabled workflows, mentor designers, and stay at the forefront of motion craft while balancing performance and accessibility across surfaces.

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of experience in motion design, product design, interaction design, or a closely related discipline.
• Staff/principal-level track record of influencing horizontally across teams, shaping a product or design-system direction, and raising quality.
• Deep command of motion and interaction design principles, including timing, choreography, easing, spring behavior, feedback, and transitions.
• Experience creating or evolving scalable motion systems, such as principles, token sets, pattern libraries, documentation, tooling, and governance.
• Proven collaboration with engineers to implement complex motion; fluency with performance, constraints, and QA.
• Design technologist mindset: prototyping tools, AI, and code to explore ideas and improve collaboration.
• Strong product and systems thinking: connect craft to user needs, strategy, accessibility, and impact.
• Excellent communication and storytelling; align cross-functional partners.
• Collaborative, low-ego working style; consider diverse user needs from start.
• Bachelor’s degree in design, animation, HCI, or related field.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve motion language across surfaces and features.
• Lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences.
• Partner with designers, engineers, PMs, researchers, and content designers.
• Prototype and validate motion ideas using tools, code, or prototypes.
• Work with engineering to balance performance and accessibility.
• Develop tools and templates to speed motion exploration.
• Stay at the leading edge of AI-enabled motion tools.
• Conduct motion quality reviews and mentor teams in motion principles.
• Articulate rationale behind motion decisions to stakeholders.

Skills

Motion design

Design systems

Cross-functional collaboration

Prototyping & tools

Strong communication

AI in design

Systems thinking

Leadership influence

Education

Bachelor's degree in design

Tools

Design tooling

Code literacy

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.

Pinterest is looking for a thoughtful, highly skilled Staff Motion Designer to join the Design Innovation team. You will define and evolve the motion design language that brings clarity, coherence, and delight to Pinterest across surfaces and flagship features. This is a hands‑on, horizontal role for a rare blend of motion craft leader, systems thinker, and design technologist. You will establish reusable motion principles, patterns, tokens, and implementation guidance within the design system; partner directly with product and engineering teams to solve challenging interaction problems; and build tools and prototypes that make it easier to explore and ship exceptional motion at scale. Your impact will extend from the details of a single interaction to the cohesive experience of Pinterest as a whole.

What You’ll Do

• Define and evolve Pinterest’s motion design language – principles, interaction and transition patterns, timing and tokens, specifications, and guidance – so motion is 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.
• Partner horizontally with product designers, engineers, product managers, researchers, and content designers to connect individual feature work to a shared motion strategy and raise the quality of shipped experiences.
• Turn high‑craft explorations into scalable design system contributions that reduce ad‑hoc implementation, improve consistency, and enable teams to move faster with confidence.
• Rapidly prototype and validate motion ideas using the right medium – motion studies, design tools, code, AI‑enabled tools, or custom prototypes – to create shared understanding and accelerate decisions.
• Work closely with engineering throughout implementation to solve 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 help engineering teams build sophisticated animations reliably.
• Stay at the leading edge of AI‑enabled motion and visual‑creation tools, applying them strategically to improve ideation, prototyping, and production while maintaining critical thinking, quality validation, and ownership of final outcomes.
• Conduct motion quality reviews, give actionable feedback on designs and implementations, and mentor designers in motion principles, systems thinking, prototype craft, and productive engineering partnership.
• Clearly articulate the rationale, tradeoffs, and user impact behind motion decisions to teams, leaders, and executives; build alignment around a high bar for motion craft and system quality.

What We’re Looking For

• 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/principal-level track record of influencing horizontally across teams, shaping a 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 – and 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.
• Demonstrated experience partnering closely with engineers to implement complex motion; 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 where useful to explore ideas, communicate intent, and improve how teams design and build.
• Strong product and systems thinking: able to connect 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 diverse cross‑functional partners.
• A collaborative, low‑ego working style with a passion for learning, experimentation, mentoring, and inclusive design. You consider 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 Points For

• 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.

Join us to define the motion language that makes Pinterest’s next generation of products feel clear, capable, and unmistakably Pinterest—raising the bar for craft, trust, and coherence for millions of Pinners.

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.

Relocation Statement

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

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.

Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.

US based applicants only

$158,765—$326,870 USD

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.