# Staff Software Engineer, Ads & Core Serving Platform

**Company:** [Pinterest](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/pinterest)
**Location:** Palo Alto, CA, San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $208k – $365k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Distributed Systems, Backend Systems, Online Serving, Low-Latency Services, Infrastructure Platforms, Java, C++, Go, Python, Observability, API Design, Incident Response, Traffic Management, Developer Tooling, Experimentation Systems
**Posted:** 2026-09-09

> Leads architecture and implementation of large-scale, low-latency serving platforms supporting Ads and Core experiences. The role requires 8+ years of backend or distributed-systems experience, strong technical leadership, and expertise in scalable production systems.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Set technical direction and lead architecture for major serving-platform initiatives across Ads and Core.
- Build and operate scalable, highly available systems with defined performance, reliability, and efficiency goals.
- Partner with product, ML, infrastructure, and Core/Ads engineering teams to translate complex requirements into reusable platform capabilities.
- Improve serving platforms through framework modernization, API evolution, experimentation controls, observability, and debugging tools.
- Lead complex projects end to end, including 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 quality through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, and operational excellence.
- Mentor engineers and scale technical leadership across the organization.

## Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience building and operating production backend or distributed systems.
- Experience leading complex technical initiatives across teams or organizations.
- Strong expertise in distributed systems, online serving, low-latency services, or infrastructure platforms.
- Ability to make tradeoffs across latency, reliability, scalability, cost, and developer experience.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills.
- Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Java, C++, Go, or Python.
- Experience mentoring engineers and elevating technical standards.
- Ability to use AI to improve engineering workflows with rigorous testing, validation, and responsible use.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent experience.

## Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with ads delivery, recommendation or search serving, retrieval, ranking, or experimentation systems.
- Experience with serving-framework migrations, platform consolidation, or developer tooling.
- Experience with observability, production debugging, traffic management, or incident response.

## Compensation
- Base salary: $208,454–$364,795 USD.
- Eligible for equity.

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