Staff Software Engineer, Capacity Engineering

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity eligible

Flexible work model

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for Capacity Engineering to own performance and efficiency across large-scale, cloud-native systems. You will lead initiatives in Kubernetes environments, profile complex workloads, and partner with SRE and Infra teams to deliver reliable foundations. AI-driven tooling and self-serve insights accelerate improvements.

The role emphasizes ownership, deep hardware and OS understanding, and delivering measurable impact at scale. US-based applicants only.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure capacity, performance, and OS concepts.
• Experience leading efficiency initiatives at scale on Kubernetes or similar infra.
• Proficiency with Java, Python and C++, and profiling tools to diagnose issues.
• Experience building highly available distributed applications and communicating complex technical topics.

Responsibilities

• Drive efficiency in large-scale Kubernetes environments, including scheduling and isolation.
• Improve performance and efficiency of large-scale distributed systems supporting Pinterest.
• Use profiling tools to root-cause performance issues and implement solutions with owning teams.
• Collaborate with Infrastructure Engineering and SRE to deliver reliable foundations.
• Leverage AI to scale impact, build self-serve insights, and validate with experiments.

Skills

Java

Python

C++

Performance profiling

Distributed systems

System design

Communication

AI usage

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Kubernetes

Perf

async-profiler

AWS

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.

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 seeking a Staff Software Engineer, Capacity Engineering. The team is responsible for efficiently managing one of the largest-scale cloud-native infrastructures in the world. This role is highly impactful, as efficiency is an ongoing strategic priority for Pinterest. The role has direct visibility across Pinterest Engineering and with Engineering and company leadership. The team is looking for a candidate with a strong background in implementing performance and efficiency projects on large scale distributed systems. In this individual-contributor role you will own and drive performance and efficiency for a core area of Capacity Engineering, partnering with the company-wide efficiency lead and collaborating with performance and efficiency leaders across the organization.

What you’ll do:

• Drive efficiency in large-scale shared environments like Kubernetes, including scheduling optimization, resource-overhead reduction, and resource isolation in multi-tenant clusters

• Improve the performance and efficiency of large scale distributed systems that drive Pinterest systems

• Use profiling and performance tooling fluently to root-cause performance and efficiency problems, propose solutions, and partner with the owning teams to implement and validate them

• Collaborate with Infrastructure Engineering and SRE teams in their mission to deliver highly available, resilient, secure and efficient foundations for Pinterest’s tech stack

• Leverage AI to scale the impact of yourself and the team, including:

• Accelerate performance investigations (e.g. quickly distill logs/metrics/traces and prior learnings) while verifying findings through measurement and testing

• Build tooling and agents that allow users to self-serve efficiency insights and recommendations

• Iterate faster on optimization approaches and rollout plans, then validate impact with experiments and production guardrails

What we’re looking for:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, a related field or equivalent experience

• Deep understanding of infrastructure capacity and performance, with a strong command of system and hardware fundamentals (how things work under the hood: CPU, memory, OS scheduling, I/O)

• Experience leading efficiency initiatives at scale on Kubernetes or other large scale shared infrastructure

• Strong technical and performance engineering skills, including fluency with profiling and performance tools such as perf and async-profiler, to root-cause complex, ambiguous problems and collaborate with stakeholders to drive solutions to implementation

• Experience building and managing highly available distributed applications at scale

• Proficiency in software development languages such as Java, Python and C++

• Excellent skills in communicating complex technical issues

• Experience with AWS or similar cloud environments

• Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve speed and quality in your day-to-day workflow for relevant outputs

• Strong track record of critical evaluation and verification of AI-assisted work (e.g., testing, source-checking, data validation, peer review)

• High integrity and ownership: you protect sensitive data, avoid over-reliance on AI, and remain accountable for final decisions and deliverables

• Bonus points for the following:

• Hands-on experience with large, cloud-native multi-tenant platforms at Internet scale

In-Office Requirement Statement:

• We let the type of work you do guide the collaboration style. That means we're not always working in an office, but we continue to gather for key moments of collaboration and connection.

• This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times/month 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.

#LI-REMOTE

#LI-JT1

At Pinterest we believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring for every employee. In an effort to provide greater transparency, we are sharing the base salary range for this position. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise.

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

US based applicants only

$177,185—$364,795 USD

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, 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.