Staff Software Engineer, Service Configuration Deployments

Pinterest; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 177,000 - 365,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to own the end-to-end technical strategy for configuration and coordination infrastructure. You will partner with Traffic, Compute, Observability, and Cloud Architecture to deliver scalable, high‑performance solutions at scale.

You will drive the long‑term vision, migrate legacy substrates to modern platforms, and design high‑quality control planes and APIs that empower engineers and automated agents while maintaining strict data governance and

Qualifications

• Minimum 10 years experience in high-scale infrastructure and distributed environments, with a track record of architecting or managing business-critical backend substrates in production settings.
• Proven expertise in orchestrating cross-functional technical strategies for control-plane systems (e.g., experiments, feature flags, or ML config), unifying disparate teams around standardized and safe rollout methodologies.
• Advanced proficiency in distributed coordination and substrate design capable of navigating complex consistency models, failure domains, and the engineering of resilient, high-leverage abstractions.
• Experience aligning configuration surfaces with deployment pipelines and orchestration frameworks (e.g., IaC or CI/CD), with a focus on mitigating architectural circularity and reducing service owner toil.
• History elevating senior engineering talent while steering parallel workstreams, synthesizing loosely coupled initiatives into a unified technical vision and executable roadmap.
• Ability to catalyze execution via AI-enabled workflows (e.g., design synthesis, analytical phases, or documentation) while ensuring rigorous accountability through data validation, peer review, and metric-driven verification.
• Extreme ownership and professional integrity: safeguarding data, maintaining human-in-the-loop oversight for automated outputs, and taking full responsibility for long-term architectural outcomes.
• Bachelor's/Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Orchestrate the long‑term technical vision for configuration ecosystems to ensure feature flags, ML settings, and experiments utilize unified paved paths.
• Spearhead the transition from legacy substrates by migrating mission‑critical use cases to modern platforms.
• Architect the next generation of control plane interfaces and diagnostic surfaces.
• Direct the integration of coordination stacks within the broader deployment and multi‑region landscape.
• Leverage AI to catalyze infrastructure design and analytical phases, utilizing assistant‑enabled workflows to synthesize partner requirements into executable roadmaps.

Skills

High-scale infra

Distributed systems

Control-plane strategies

IaC/CI-CD

AI-enabled workflows

Leadership

Ownership & integrity

Education

Bachelor's/Master's in CS/CE or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD pipelines

Golang

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 theflexibility 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 Service Configuration Deployment team builds the platforms, APIs, and tooling that make dynamic configuration and service coordination safe, scalable, and reliable for every service across regions and clouds, serving as the central hub for cross-functional alignment and system orchestration. As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll own the end-to-end technical strategy and long-term vision for our configuration and coordination infrastructure. You'll define the future of these mission-critical systems, partnering closely with Traffic, Compute, Observability, and Cloud Architecture teams to deliver robust, high-performance solutions at scale.

What you’ll do:

• Orchestrate the long‑term technical vision for configuration ecosystems to ensure feature flags, ML settings, and experiments utilize unified paved paths. You will champion operational safety through standardized validation, staged rollout mechanisms, and robust governance frameworks across the organization.
• Spearhead the transition from legacy substrates by migrating mission‑critical use cases to modern platforms. You will establish scalable onboarding patterns that enable engineering teams to evolve their configuration lifecycle with precision and minimal friction.
• Architect the next generation of control plane interfaces and diagnostic surfaces. By engineering high‑performance, read‑optimized APIs, you will empower human operators and automated assistants to seamlessly manage and reason about complex production states.
• Direct the integration of coordination stacks within the broader deployment and multi‑region landscape. Your leadership will refine service discovery and substrate architecture to accelerate regional expansion while eliminating bespoke toil and architectural circularity.
• Leverage AI to catalyze infrastructure design and analytical phases, utilizing assistant‑enabled workflows to synthesize partner requirements into executable roadmaps. You will maintain absolute accountability through rigorous data validation, metric‑driven reviews, and comprehensive peer verification.

What we’re looking for:

• Minimum 10 years experience in high‑scale infrastructure and distributed environments, with a track record of architecting or managing business‑critical backend substrates in production settings.
• Proven expertise in orchestrating cross‑functional technical strategies for control‑plane systems (e.g., experiments, feature flags, or ML config), unifying disparate teams around standardized and safe rollout methodologies.
• Advanced proficiency in distributed coordination and substrate design‑capable of navigating complex consistency models, failure domains, and the engineering of resilient, high‑leverage abstractions.
• Experience aligning configuration surfaces with deployment pipelines and orchestration frameworks (e.g., IaC or CI/CD), with a focus on mitigating architectural circularity and reducing service owner toil.
• History of elevating senior engineering talent while steering parallel workstreams, synthesizing loosely coupled initiatives into a unified technical vision and executable roadmap.
• Ability to catalyze execution via AI‑enabled workflows (e.g., design synthesis, analytical phases, or documentation) while ensuring rigorous accountability through data validation, peer review, and metric‑driven verification.
• Extreme ownership and professional integrity: dedicated to safeguarding data, maintaining human‑in‑the‑loop oversight for automated outputs, and taking full responsibility for long‑term architectural outcomes.
• Bachelor's/Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

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.

Relocation Statement:

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

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 completethis form for support.