Staff Software Engineer- Growth Performance Marketing

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

Job summary

Pinterest seeks a senior backend engineer to lead the technical roadmap for our performance marketing platform, shaping attribution, bidding, and campaign management at scale. You will work across ad platform integrations, event pipelines, and production systems, using Python/Java/Scala and SQL, and you’ll apply ML infrastructure concepts to support AI-driven workflows.

This role requires 7+ years building backend systems, fluency with paid media APIs, and collaboration with product, data

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience building backend systems and shipping at scale.
• Strong understanding of paid media platforms and their APIs (Google Ads, Meta, TikTok, etc.).
• Experience with near real-time systems for bidding and budget optimization.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical roadmap for the performance marketing platform across attribution, bidding, and campaign management.
• Drive hands-on engineering across ad platform integrations, event pipelines, and production systems that deploy and measure spend.
• Design and evolve the measurement stack with attribution models, conversion signals, and privacy‑resilient approaches.
• Develop systems that automate bidding strategies and campaign experiments at scale.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams across ads, data warehousing, and mobile teams to align on design and delivery.
• Mentor engineers and promote engineering best practices and reliable system design.
• Use AI to accelerate workflows while ensuring validation and data integrity.

Skills

Backend systems

Python

Java/Scala

SQL

Distributed systems

AI/ML workflows

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Kafka

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's performance marketing engineering team owns the end-to-end systems that turn marketing dollars into measured user growth spanning attribution, bidding, budget optimization, and campaign management across major advertising platforms. This role is responsible for designing systems that scale across channels and adapt as privacy landscapes shift.

What you’ll do:

• Lead the technical roadmap for the performance marketing platform, defining the highest-impact investments across attribution, bidding, budget optimization, and campaign management
• Drive hands‑on engineering across ad platform integrations, event pipelines, and production systems that deploy and measure marketing spend
• Design and evolve the measurement stack — attribution models, conversion signal collection, incrementality methodology, and privacy‑resilient approaches as platform signals degrade
• Develop systems that automate and optimize bidding strategies and campaign experimentation at scale
• Drive cross‑team technical initiatives with ads platform, data warehouse, and mobile teams — authoring design documents and building alignment across engineering orgs
• Own system reliability and operational health for spend‑critical systems where downtime or bugs have direct financial impact
• Collaborate with marketing, data science, and product partners to identify growth opportunities and turn them into engineered solutions
• Mentor and develop engineers on the team, establishing technical best practices and raising the bar on system design
• Use AI to accelerate your own work—across exploration, drafting, analysis, and synthesis—while maintaining strong judgment, rigorous validation, and accountability for outcomes

What we’re looking for:

• 7+ years of experience building and shipping backend systems, with hands‑on experience supporting performance marketing
• Strong understanding of paid media platforms — Google Ads, Meta, TikTok, Snap, or similar — and the operational realities of integrating with their APIs at scale
• Deep understanding of attribution methodologies (last click, multi‑touch, SKAN, probabilistic vs. deterministic), incrementality testing, and conversion optimization, with hands‑on experience integrating mobile measurement partners (AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular, or similar) across mobile clients and server‑side APIs
• Experience with near real‑time systems for bidding, budget optimization, and conversion event delivery — you understand the mechanics well enough to evolve existing systems and propose improvements
• Strong proficiency building and operating data pipelines and services using Python or Java/Scala, plus SQL; experience with modern big data ecosystems is a plus
• Strong systems design skills across distributed systems, event‑driven architectures, and service‑oriented backends
• Familiarity with ML infrastructure concepts and ability to build systems that support ML workloads
• Demonstrated ability to use AI to accelerate your workflow while maintaining high standards for verification, data integrity, and ownership of final outputs
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, or equivalent experience

Relocation Statement:

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

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.

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.