Staff Motion Designer — Remote, AI-Driven Craft & Impact

Pinterest; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 159,000 - 327,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Motion Designer to define and evolve the motion language across our product surface and flagship features. This hands-on, horizontal role blends motion craft leadership with systems thinking and design-technology collaboration to solve complex interaction challenges at scale.

You will establish reusable motion principles, tokens, and implementation guidance within the design system, prototype rapidly, and mentor designers while maintaining accessibility and

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in motion design, product design, interaction design, or a closely related discipline.
• Staff/principal-level track record influencing horizontally across teams and design-system direction.
• Deep command of motion principles, including timing, choreography, easing, and transitions.
• Experience creating or evolving scalable motion systems with tokens, libraries, and governance.
• Proven collaboration with engineers to implement complex motion and ensure performance and accessibility.
• Design technologist mindset with prototyping tools, AI, and code usage.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve Pinterest's motion design language—principles, interaction and transition patterns, timing, tokens, specifications, and guidance.
• Lead motion direction for flagship and AI-forward experiences, clarifying state, cause/effect, hierarchy, feedback, and system responsiveness.
• Partner with product designers, engineers, PMs, researchers, and content designers to connect features to a shared motion strategy.
• Turn high-craft explorations into scalable design-system contributions that reduce ad hoc implementation.
• Rapidly prototype and validate motion ideas using motion studies, design tools, code, AI-enabled tools, or prototypes.
• Collaborate with engineering throughout implementation to balance performance, accessibility, and maintainability.
• Develop lightweight tools, templates, and workflows to help designers explore motion ideas quickly.
• Stay at the leading edge of AI-enabled motion tools and apply them to ideation, prototyping, and production.
• Conduct motion quality reviews, mentor designers in motion principles, and communicate rationale to teams and leadership.
• Clearly articulate the rationale and tradeoffs behind motion decisions to align stakeholders.

Skills

Motion design

Design systems

Prototyping tools

Collaboration

AI experience

Systems thinking

Communication

Big picture thinking

Education

Bachelor's degree in design

Tools

Design tools

Job description

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Motion Designer to define and evolve the motion language across our product surface and flagship features. This hands-on, horizontal role blends motion craft leadership with systems thinking and design-technology collaboration to solve complex interaction challenges at scale.

You will establish reusable motion principles, tokens, and implementation guidance within the design system, prototype rapidly, and mentor designers while maintaining accessibility and