Staff Software Engineer - AI-Driven Service Mesh Remote

Pinterest; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 177,000 - 365,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest seeks a Staff Engineer to lead the Service Communications team, shaping strategy across identity, traffic optimization, and platform scaling. You’ll design and deploy Envoy-based service mesh features, drive secure mTLS adoption, and collaborate with cross‑functional teams to improve reliability at scale.

You will maintain Java, Python, and C++ libraries, mentor engineers, and help accelerate engineering workflows using AI while ensuring accuracy and quality.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in infrastructure or platform engineering for distributed systems.
• Hands-on with service mesh tech such as Envoy or Istio and L7 proxying.
• Proficient in Java, Python and C++ with experience building internal libraries.
• Strong knowledge of mTLS and identity management via SPIFFE/SPIRE.
• Experience designing scalable distributed systems at large scale.
• Experience driving platform capability adoption across teams.
• Experience using AI to accelerate engineering workflows with quality checks.

Responsibilities

• Architect and deploy advanced service mesh features with Envoy-based mesh.
• Lead organization-wide adoption of service identity and mTLS.
• Design locality-aware routing and other traffic optimization primitives.
• Maintain and modernize Java, Python, and C++ libraries for developers.
• Collaborate with service owners to refine infrastructure requirements.
• Partner on multi-region/multi-cloud strategies for robust service communication.
• Use AI to accelerate analysis and iteration with validation of results.
• Join oncall rotation to improve reliability and incident response.

Skills

Distributed systems

Service mesh (Envoy/Istio)

Java

Python

C++

Security/mTLS/SPIFFE

AI in engineering workflows

Education

Bachelor’s/Master’s in Computer Science or related

Job description

Pinterest seeks a Staff Engineer to lead the Service Communications team, shaping strategy across identity, traffic optimization, and platform scaling. You’ll design and deploy Envoy-based service mesh features, drive secure mTLS adoption, and collaborate with cross‑functional teams to improve reliability at scale.

You will maintain Java, Python, and C++ libraries, mentor engineers, and help accelerate engineering workflows using AI while ensuring accuracy and quality.