Skip to content

Sr. Software Engineer, Backend

150k – 308kSan Francisco, CASeattle, WARemote4+ YOE
Summary

Senior backend engineer builds scalable features, GraphQL APIs, and distributed systems for Pinterest's core, monetization, and tech foundations teams. Requires 4+ years experience, proficiency in backend stacks like Python/Java/Go, and AI utilization for productivity.

About the role

What you’ll do

  • Build out the backend for Pinner-facing features to power the future of inspiration on Pinterest
  • Partner with design, product, and backend teams to build end-to-end functionality
  • Put on your Pinner hat to suggest new product ideas and features
  • Employ automated testing to build features with a high degree of technical quality, taking responsibility for the components and features you develop
  • Grow as an engineer by working with world-class peers on varied and high impact projects
  • Design, develop, and operate large scale, distributed systems and networks
  • Work with Engineering customers to understand new requirements and address them in a scalable and efficient manner
  • Actively work to improve the developer process and experience in all phases from coding to operation
  • May contribute to and lead each step of the product development process, from ideation to implementation to release; from rapidly prototyping, running A/B tests, to architecting and building solutions that can scale to support millions of users
  • Leverage AI to seek faster execution (i.e. draft, prototype, outline) and explore alternative options (i.e. iterate, compare approaches)
  • Leverage AI to synthesize information (summarize, distill themes) and automate repeatable tasks (documentation, reporting, QA checks)

What we’re looking for

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related field or equivalent experience
  • 4+ years of industry backend development experience, building consumer or business facing products
  • Proficiency in common backend tech stacks for online service, storage, caching and data processing
  • Proficiency in building GraphQL APIs and converting REST to GraphQL
  • Passionate about working on a Platform team; experience owning large projects
  • Self-motivated and a desire to improve the lives of other developers / internal developer productivity
  • Experience in following best practices in writing reliable and maintainable code that may be used by many other engineers
  • Ability to keep up-to-date with new technologies to understand what should be incorporated
  • Strong collaboration and communication skills
  • Experience building & operating large scale distributed systems and/or networks. Bonus points if you enjoy deploying and operating large scale workloads on a public cloud footprint
  • Experience in Python, Java, C++, or Go or another language and a willingness to learn
  • Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve speed and quality in your day-to-day workflow for relevant outputs
  • Strong track record of critical evaluation and verification of AI-assisted work (e.g., testing, source-checking, data validation, peer review)
Skills
GraphQLRESTPythonJavaC++GoDistributed SystemsPublic CloudAutomated TestingLarge Scale Systems
Similar roles at this salary range
All Backend Engineering jobs →
Aurelian

Senior Backend Engineer

Senior Backend Engineer to architect and scale voice AI systems for 911 centers, optimizing realtime pipelines and integrating with customer systems. Requires 4+ years of software engineering experience.

150k – 200kSeattle, WABackend EngineeringOn-siteGoSQL
ClickUp

Senior Backend Engineer, Platform

Senior backend engineer building and scaling API tooling, shared services, and distributed systems that power ClickUp's AI platform capabilities.

160k – 210kUnited StatesBackend EngineeringRemoteKafkaGolang
MongoDB

Senior Software Engineer, Public Backup

Senior engineer building and scaling MongoDB's backup infrastructure including Go agents, Java server systems, and JavaScript UI for petabyte-scale distributed database recovery.

126k – 248kNew York, NYBackend EngineeringOn-siteGoC#
Pindrop

Senior Software Engineer - Pulse

Design, develop, and maintain scalable cloud services and APIs in Go and Python. Requires 5-7 years of experience, strong DevOps skills with Kubernetes and CI/CD, and expertise in data structures, algorithms, and concurrency.

130k – 170kUnited StatesBackend EngineeringRemoteGoS3
Pindrop

Senior Software Engineer - Capture

Senior Software Engineer building real-time audio/video ingestion and media processing pipelines for telephony and meeting platforms (Zoom, Teams, Webex, Meet). Requires strong experience with VoIP/WebRTC, distributed systems, and Kubernetes.

130k – 170kUnited StatesBackend EngineeringRemoteSIPRTP