Staff Software Engineer (Ads & Core Serving Platform)
Posted Updated
Description
- Pinterest is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to help evolve the serving platforms that power Ads and Core experiences. You will lead large-scale, low-latency distributed-system initiatives that make our serving stack more performant, reliable, observable, and easier to extend
- You will work across Ads and Core engineering teams to define durable platform capabilities, modernize frameworks, and unlock faster product iteration with high confidence in production
- Set technical direction and lead architecture for major serving-platform initiatives across Ads and Core
- Build and operate scalable, highly available systems with clear performance, reliability, and efficiency goals
- Partner with product, ML, infrastructure, and Core/Ads engineering teams to translate complex requirements into reusable platform capabilities
- Improve the serving stack through framework modernization, API evolution, experimentation controls, observability, and debugging tools
- Lead complex projects end to end: technical strategy, design, implementation, rollout, adoption, and operational readiness
- Use AI to accelerate analysis, debugging, design exploration, and iteration while applying sound engineering judgment and validation
- Raise the quality bar through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, and operational excellence
- Mentor engineers and scale technical leadership across the organization
- Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Java, C++, Go, or Python
- Demonstrated ability to make sound tradeoffs across latency, reliability, scalability, cost, and developer experience
- Experience mentoring engineers and elevating technical standards
- Experience with serving-framework migrations, platform consolidation, or developer tooling
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent experience
- 8+ years of software engineering experience building and operating production backend or distributed systems
- Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve the speed and quality of day-to-day engineering workflows, with a rigorous approach to testing, validation, and responsible use
- Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with ads delivery, recommendation or search serving, retrieval, ranking, or experimentation systems
- Experience leading complex technical initiatives across teams or organizations
- Experience with observability, production debugging, traffic management, or incident response
- Strong communication and collaboration skills with technical and cross-functional partners
- Strong expertise in distributed systems, online serving, low-latency services, or infrastructure platforms