Staff Software Engineer, Activation Team
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 produ
What this role actually needs.
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 produ Responsibilities: - Lead the technical roadmap for activation backend systems, defining the highest-impact opportunities for new and returning users - Drive hands-on backend engineering across APIs, event pipelines, production systems, and recommendation serving - Build signal infrastructure that captures user intent from entry points and makes it available to recommendation systems - Collaborate closely with ML engineers, building the backend infrastructure that ML models depend on - Partner with product managers and data scientists to translate user problems into technical opportunities - Drive cross-team technical initiatives, authoring design documents and building alignment across engineering orgs Requirements: - 5+ years of experience building and shipping large-scale backend systems at consumer internet companies - 2+ years of experience as a senior IC driving cross-team projects with measurable business impact - Strong product mindset with the ability to identify which technical problems matter most for business impact - Track record of rapid execution and driving projects to completion in ambiguous environments - 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 Company context: Pinterest is the visual discovery platform that powers idea search and shopping across web and mobile.
Day-to-day expectations
Pinterest lists these responsibilities for the Staff Software Engineer, Activation Team role.
- Lead the technical roadmap for activation backend systems, defining the highest-impact opportunities for new and returning users
- Drive hands-on backend engineering across APIs, event pipelines, production systems, and recommendation serving
- Build signal infrastructure that captures user intent from entry points and makes it available to recommendation systems
- Collaborate closely with ML engineers, building the backend infrastructure that ML models depend on
- Partner with product managers and data scientists to translate user problems into technical opportunities
- Drive cross-team technical initiatives, authoring design documents and building alignment across engineering orgs
What a strong candidate brings
These requirements are extracted from the source listing and normalized for UpJobz readers.
- 5+ years of experience building and shipping large-scale backend systems at consumer internet companies
- 2+ years of experience as a senior IC driving cross-team projects with measurable business impact
- Strong product mindset with the ability to identify which technical problems matter most for business impact
- Track record of rapid execution and driving projects to completion in ambiguous environments
- 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
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Staff Software Engineer, Activation Team is framed against UpJobz source checks, country scope, compensation visibility, and work-authorization signals so candidates can make a faster go/no-go decision.
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Current extracted signal: Open to TN, H-1B, and OPT candidates already in the United States. UpJobz treats this as a search signal, not legal advice, and links visa-sensitive roles back to the relevant visa hub where possible.
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On-site roles in San Francisco should be compared against commute, local salary bands, and nearby employer demand.
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- Tailor your resume around ai and machine-learning instead of sending a generic application.
- Use the first two bullets of your application to connect your background directly to staff software engineer, activation team is a high-signal on-site role in san francisco, and it is most realistic for open to tn, h-1b, and opt candidates already in the united states.
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Watchouts
- Compensation is hidden, so get range clarity in the first recruiter conversation.
- Use open to tn, h-1b, and opt candidates already in the united states as part of your positioning so the recruiter does not have to infer it.
- Show concrete examples of succeeding in on-site environments.
Keywords to match against your background
Use these terms to decide whether your resume, portfolio, and recent projects line up with the role.
Apply through the employer source
Open the source listing from pinterestcareers.com, confirm the role is still active, then apply on the employer or ATS page.
Source: pinterestcareers.com · Source ID: 7681015 · Confidence: 90/100 · Last checked: May 7, 2026
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