Staff Software Engineer, Ads & Core Serving Platform

Engg; Palo Alto, San Francisco (CA, CA); Hybrid; USD 208,000 - 365,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to evolve the serving platforms that power Ads and Core experiences. You will lead large-scale, low-latency distributed-system initiatives across Ads and Core, driving durable platform capabilities and modernizing frameworks.

You will collaborate with product, ML, infrastructure and Core/Ads teams to deliver scalable, observable systems with strong production readiness and mentorship across the organization.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building and operating production backend or distributed systems.
• Experience leading complex technical initiatives across teams or organizations.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Java, C++, Go, or Python.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction and lead architecture for major serving-platform initiatives across Ads and Core.
• Build and operate scalable, highly available systems with clear performance, reliability, and efficiency goals.
• Partner with product, ML, infrastructure, and Core/Ads engineering teams to translate complex requirements into reusable platform capabilities.
• Improve the serving stack through framework modernization, API evolution, observability, and debugging tools.
• Lead complex projects end to end: technical strategy, design, implementation, rollout, adoption, and operational readiness.
• Use AI to accelerate analysis, debugging, design exploration, and iteration while applying sound engineering judgment and validation.
• Raise the quality bar through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, and operational excellence.
• Mentor engineers and scale technical leadership across the organization.

Skills

Distributed systems

Low-latency services

Leadership

Mentoring engineers

Java

C++

Go

Python

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science

Tools

Observability tools

Production debugging

Job description

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to evolve the serving platforms that power Ads and Core experiences. You will lead large-scale, low-latency distributed-system initiatives across Ads and Core, driving durable platform capabilities and modernizing frameworks.

You will collaborate with product, ML, infrastructure and Core/Ads teams to deliver scalable, observable systems with strong production readiness and mentorship across the organization.