Staff Software Engineer, Trends Machine Learning Infrastructure

Jobtailor; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking an experienced technical leader to set the direction for a unified, audience-first insights platform powering Trends, Audience Insights, and advertiser-ready recommendations. You will architect scalable data pipelines and mentor engineers while delivering data-driven roadmap bets from prototype to production.

Lead AI-powered features with strict safety and quality guardrails, collaborating with Product, Design, Data Science, and Ads teams to embed proactive insights into

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time designing large-scale data or ML-powered platforms that serve customer-facing products.
• Ability to work with cross-functional partners across multiple organizations.
• Hands-on experience building tools and data pipelines leveraging AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex).
• Experience as the product-engineering counterpart on an AI-first product launch from prototype to scale.
• Demonstrated experience using AI to accelerate engineering and analysis workflows, with a focus on accuracy, performance and quality.
• Experience leading cross-surface product integrations across multiple teams and organizational boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for a unified, audience-first insights platform that powers Pinterest Trends, Audience Insights, and recommendations embedded across Ads Manager surfaces.
• Architect scalable data pipelines and systems that generate reusable, personalized insights from signals.
• Lead delivery of high-impact roadmap bets from prototype to production.
• Build LLM-powered capabilities with safety, quality, and evaluation guardrails.
• Partner with Product, Design, Data Science, and Ads teams to integrate insights into advertiser workflows.
• Use AI to accelerate prototyping, design exploration, and code generation with engineering judgment and verification.
• Synthesize research, summarize large datasets, and automate repeatable engineering tasks like documentation and data QA checks.
• Mentor engineers, raise the technical bar, and establish measurement practices linking insight quality to revenue impact.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Cursor

Claude Code

Codex

Job description

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for a unified, audience‑first insights platform that powers Pinterest Trends, Audience Insights, and recommendations embedded across Ads Manager surfaces.
• Architect scalable data pipelines and systems that generate reusable, personalized insights from Pinterest's trend, audience, and content signals.
• Lead delivery of high‑impact roadmap bets such as Trends Digest, Moments, Topics expansion, and Product Attributes from prototype to production.
• Build LLM‑powered capabilities (summarization, classification, conversational insights, agentic review) with strong safety, quality, and evaluation guardrails.
• Partner with Product, Design, Data Science, and Ads org teams to bring proactive, contextual insights into advertiser workflows beyond standalone surfaces.
• Use AI to accelerate prototyping, design exploration, and code generation iterating across more options earlier while applying engineering judgment and verification to ensure correctness and quality.
• Use AI to synthesize research, summarize large datasets, and automate repeatable engineering tasks like documentation, test generation, and data QA checks.
• Mentor engineers across the team, raise the technical bar, and establish measurement practices that connect insight quality to advertiser adoption and revenue impact.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time designing large‑scale data or ML‑powered platforms that serve customer‑facing products.
• Ability to work with cross‑functional partners across multiple organizations.
• Hands‑on experience building tools and data pipelines leveraging AI coding tools, e.g. Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, etc.
• Experience as the product‑engineering counterpart on an AI‑first product launch from prototype to scale.
• Demonstrated experience using AI to accelerate engineering and analysis workflows, with a clear approach to validating accuracy, performance, and quality.
• Strong track record of critical evaluation and verification of AI‑assisted work — testing, source‑checking, data validation, and peer review.
• Experience leading cross‑surface product integrations across multiple teams and organizational boundaries, not just standalone tools.